The Twinkling
by mellowenglishgal
Summary: When Emmeline Ascended, she started getting nightmares, and they only get more and more vivid. When reclusive Emmy realises shy Tyler is interested in things she likes and hanging out with her, what will happen?
1. The Lightweight and the Recluse

**A.N.**: The title is a spoof of Stephen King's _The Shining_, which I have neither seen nor read, so bear with me! This story was inspired by the pilot episode of _Supernatural_. There are several differences between this story and the canon film plot, mostly that Caleb and Emmeline's grandfather is still alive.

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**The Twinkling**

Chapter One

_The Lightweight and the Recluse_

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_No source documents the beginning of magic, where it came from, why it exists, but those who mastered it have historically been hunted out of fear by those who do not understand it. In the midst of the political and religious turmoil of the 17__th__ Century, many escaped the brutal Witch-hunting in England and France by coming to America. As the ruthless persecution of those with magic spread throughout Massachusetts, the founding families of Ipswich formed a covenant of silence. For three-hundred years, it has kept them safe. Until now._

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Emmeline didn't much like parties like this; like _Spenser_ parties; but she had learned young that when Reid said 'You're coming out for a good time,' she had no other choice in the matter. The party was at _her_ house, however, so after an hour or so and seeing several people already vomiting into antique planters after some of Reid's Jell-O shots, she had retreated to the quiet sanctuary of her bedroom. No one bothered her up here; bedrooms were expected to be used at a party where she and her twin-brother Caleb were getting rid of all their mother's alcohol stashes, but _her_ bedroom was off-limits, as Caleb's was.

Besides, no one except the boys would ever care where she was, and they were having too good a time downstairs to wonder where she'd disappeared to. Caleb wasn't really a partier either; it had been Pogue's idea to throw a party to get rid of the booze, and Reid had used his fake I.D. to get some kegs from the Cash-and-Carry downtown.

Neither Kate nor Sarah were very good friends with Emmeline; they were just dating Pogue and Caleb, and it was difficult to relate to the girls when Emmeline was the kind of girl who was completely assured of who she was and what she liked; she would rather go to a restaurant or Nicky's with a small group of friends, or go and see a movie, or have a few people over to watch movies, play games and make chocolate-chip waffles, her Grandpa's specialty. It was difficult to relate to Kate because she still didn't know their families' secret, and Sarah was a girly-girl who _did_ know about their powers, which made things quite uncomfortable for Emmeline, who had never been close enough to anyone besides the boys to even consider telling her darkest secret to.

So she sat in her bedroom, wishing the hundred-odd strangers would leave her house so she wouldn't have to waste a whole weekend making sure everything was clean and tidy and no trace of a party remained by the time her mother returned, hopefully sober, from the rehab facility she had checked herself into the day after Emmeline's eighteenth birthday. Alone in her bedroom, she couldn't help feeling a little bit of niggling doubt; downstairs, she could count on one hand the number of people she knew, and knew well. A feeling of complete insignificance settled in her stomach and Emmeline let out a deep sigh that got to her eyes. She licked her lips and sought her little black fifth-generation iPod Nano from the heavy folds of her duck-feather duvet and plugged her earphones in. The music from the party was dulled, her bedroom removed from the main downstairs rooms, but she could hear a soft bass rhythm and securing her noise-cancelling earphones, she chose her favourite playlist, settled herself deep in the cloister of her über-comfy bed and opened her book-_Wuthering Heights_, her favourite book of all time—and started to read.

She was halfway through chapter seven when her bedroom door opened, and glancing up, she sat up straighter, plucking her earphones out.

Tyler stumbled into the room, staggered while he closed the door loudly, and was panting by the time he slid down the door onto his bottom on the threshold of her bedroom, his eyes closed, lips parted, looking green.

Her book forgotten, Emmeline stumbled off her bed and squatted down beside Tyler, who seemed to be clinging to her rug for some reason.

"Baby Boy?" she said gently, and Tyler just panted, shaking his head slowly. She could smell alcohol on his breath as sure as anything. "How much have you had to drink, Tyler?"

"Reid…made me…drink…bottle…port," Tyler panted, looking nauseated, as if he was trying to keep something down.

"Come on," she said gently, rising off the floor and holding out her hands; Tyler peeked his burning sapphire-blue eyes open and eyed her hands, panted, and with great effort, staggered off the floor. Emmeline glanced at the toilet in her en-suite and the lid rose automatically; by the time they crossed the threshold of her en-suite bathroom, Tyler was running for the toilet, groaning.

Emmeline wouldn't miss this. In the beginning, before the alcoholism had really taken over, her mother used to just get drunk. Grandpa couldn't take care of her when she was in that state, so it had fallen on Caleb, and usually Emmeline, to take care of her. Emmeline knew every hangover cure known to man, and from her mother had learned never to drink on an empty stomach or mix drinks.

She rinsed the glass from her bedside cabinet and filled it with cold water for Tyler to sip, and sat on the lip of the bathtub, rubbing his back soothingly while he continued to be sick, moaning.

It was just like Reid to take advantage of Baby Boy's low tolerance for alcohol. An entire bottle of port—and Emmeline's mother never drank low-quality stuff. She always had the very best—their families always did, hers, Tyler's, Reid's, Pogue's; they were some of the oldest families in Massachusetts, after all. Money was no object to anyone in their circle of friends. But Tyler was the baby of their group, and Reid took delight in challenging him to do things he knew Tyler couldn't do, like downing a bottle of port wine.

"Gargle some water," she said quietly, curling Tyler's fingers around the tumbler of water; he sipped it, gargled and spit into the toilet, and while he did it again and then once more, she found a spare toothbrush in one of the console drawers and loaded it with toothpaste, handed it to Tyler and sat down again on the lip of the bathtub.

Tyler slumped to the floor, his expression so careworn and upset, brushing his teeth languorously, and he pulled himself into a standing position to spit out the paste and rinse.

"Emmy, can I stay up here with you?" Tyler croaked, running a shaking hand over his face and slumping back down onto the floor.

"Sure," Emmeline said softly, handing him the glass of water. "Drink this all up." Tyler took the glass and obediently drained it, and then another. She inhaled and sighed, glancing into her bedroom, at her comfy bed calling to her, and she glanced back at Tyler.

"Baby Boy, you really need a shower, because you _stink_," she said quietly, and Tyler's eyebrows contracted, his sapphire eyes widening innocently.

"_Do I_?" he gasped, and sniffed at his jacket. "I _do_! Oh my god." He tried and failed to remove his jacket; Emmeline smiled affectionately and stood up, resting her hands on his chest so he paused, and smoothed his jacket off him.

"Arms up, Baby Boy," she said, and adorably, like a sweet little kid he still usually was, Tyler raised his arms, his eyes sliding closed tiredly. Smiling to herself, Emmeline removed Tyler's layered t-shirts, but Tyler gently swatted her hands away when she went to his belt-buckle.

Blushing, he murmured, "I can do it," and Emmeline shrugged, surprised to find her cheeks were warm when she glanced away and tampered with the water temperature for the shower.

"I'll go and get you some pyjamas," she said quietly, not looking at Tyler and avoiding the mirror, and she heard Tyler's sleepy mumble and the sound of water bouncing off his skin as he climbed into the shower. She snuck across the hall to Caleb's bedroom, glad she hadn't found him in there with Sarah, and grabbed a t-shirt and a pair of Caleb's plaid pyjama-bottoms from his dresser, closed the door behind her and retreated into her own room. The shower was still on when she entered the bedroom, and she was glad of the steam swirling around in the en-suite when she folded up the clothes and placed them out for Tyler.

She didn't know when it was that they had become awkward about nudity. For such a long time, they had all palled around and acted as if they were the closest friends in the world; she, Tyler, Reid, Caleb and Pogue had always done everything together. They'd never had any secrets from each other, always shared hobbies and possessions, liked the same stuff and got along so well it was sometimes sickening to think about. They had grown up running around their parents' lawns naked, soaking each other during summer-camp and skinny-dipping in the Danvers' pond and the brook that bubbled prettily behind the Simms' house. She didn't care about Reid—he was practically nude all the time, and had no shame; she wasn't bashful about seeing him naked; she and Caleb were too close to get embarrassed about that kind of stuff, and, well, it was a treat seeing Pogue in the nude. All those muscles!

So why did she suddenly feel flushed at the thought of Tyler being naked in her shower?

And why did he have a problem with her stripping his clothes off? It wasn't like she hadn't done it a thousand times before to all of the others, including Tyler. It seemed like it was a weekly occurrence that they had to take care of Reid, who loved to party, or make sure Pogue wasn't caught sneaking out of the girls' dorms by the supervisor after a party.

Well, whatever. Scratching Absalom—her family's old, English Bulldog—behind the ears, she climbed onto her bed and picked up _Wuthering Heights_. Five minutes later, Tyler shuffled out of the en-suite bathroom, dressed in Caleb's clothes with a towel draped over his head, slowly rubbing his hair dry.

"Hey," Emmeline said quietly, glancing up from her book. "Feeling better?"

"Mm," Tyler grumbled, shaking his head, his lips pouty. He climbed slowly onto the bed, draped himself across it, and rested his head in her lap with a sigh. Trying not to fidget, Emmeline sat up a little straighter and combed her fingertips through Tyler's damp hair.

"Want me to get you a soda?" she asked. "Or something to eat?"

"Uh-uh," Tyler grumbled, shaking his head slightly. "Sleep…"

"Alright, come on, then," Emmeline sighed, gently pushing Tyler's head off her lap. "Lie down properly." Grumbling and pouting, Tyler crawled under the duvet, snuggling deep underneath, only his lovely brunette hair visible. A moment later, he had passed out, and Emmeline snuggled under the duvet, reading until nearly two a.m., when she heard the music cut out and the last car peal out of the driveway. Her eyes tired, Emmeline set her alarm, changed into her pyjamas and curled up under the duvet beside Tyler.

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**A.N.**: Please review! It was only a snippet because I wanted to get a first chapter posted so that there are some actual decent-quality Covenant fanfictions to read. I tried to find some, and gave up because it was such a hopeless quest, and decided I needed to write some more of my own!


	2. The Trembling Child

**A.N.**: For _missiexox_, because you reviewed first!

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**The Twinkling**

Chapter Two

_The Trembling Child_

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Emmeline jerked bolt upright, ice-cold and filled with a bone-numbing dread that had everything to do with her nightmare. What she had dreamt of had scared her so badly she was using magic during her sleep—everywhere she looked, her things were levitating in midair, some of them spinning, and most fell with a crash the second she woke up. Channelling her power, she repaired anything damaged and returned everything to its proper place, and a soft snuffling beside her made her look around.

Tyler was still fast asleep, his thick, curling eyelashes spread like fans, his lips pouty; groaning, feeling like her head was about to explode, Emmeline crawled out of bed, grabbed the glass in the bathroom and drained water from it; refilling it, she padded back into her bedroom, placed the glass on the bedside table for Tyler, and sank onto the bench at the foot of her bed.

_They're getting worse_, Emmeline thought, running her hands over her face. Whatever she was dreaming of, her nightmares had gotten worse and worse since a few weeks before her Ascension. Now, they were invading her waking moments as well; she always knew when they were going to set on her, because she got the most blinding pain in her head just before she got the most painful daydreams ever. She sighed, shuffled over to her desk and extricated from the mess a thin turquoise exercise-book, the kind found in a first-grade English class, and a pen.

Settling into the antique sofa under her window, she uncapped the pen and wrote down exactly what she remembered from her dream. They were so vivid, so _real_…

When she had finished recording everything she could remember, scribbling down notes and sketching down images, she flicked through the other entries into her journal. Frowning, she mapped how many times she had seen the image of the little girl. In her dreams, she always saw the same little girl, barely five years old, with tumbling dark hair, in a little plain dress and a dainty white cap, and soaking wet, her eyes wide, scared, pained. And there was a little boy, only a few years younger, with sweet dimples and curling hair, his cries echoing throughout her dream… But last night, she had seen a woman, a beautiful woman with black eyes and great long lashes like a cow, dressed in a long, antique white nightgown.

She didn't know who the woman was, but each time she dreamed of the little girl, she felt as if she was supposed to know something, supposed to understand what the little girl was trying to communicate to her. Whatever it was, she knew it was important.

Suddenly, her alarm emanated from her iPod-dock; the Potter Puppet Pals 'Mysterious Ticking Noise' started playing, and Emmeline jumped and put a hand to her head. She was getting jumpy in her old age. She jumped up and whacked her snooze-button and turned her alarm off before it could wake Tyler. She always set her alarm for half-past six, if she wasn't expected at an obscenely early swimming practice at Spenser. Checking on Tyler, she picked out an outfit, locked the bathroom door and showered, hoping the sound of her hair-dryer wouldn't wake Baby Boy. She blow-dried her hair and flicked a brush through it, dressed and hung her towel on the warmer to dry and exited the bathroom. Tyler was still asleep, and she tiptoed out of her room, Absalom lolloping on after her to be let outside.

She avoided looking at the carnage that was the downstairs of her family's ancestral home; she was sure there would be a ton of mess to clean up, and a few bodies sprawled on the handmade, antique silk-and-wool rugs and antique furniture. It was early in the morning, and she didn't want to have to deal with the mess just yet; she wouldn't be able to use magic to clean up until everyone else had gone home, which could take hours. She let Absalom out through the kitchen door and turned on kettle, and filled the cafetiere, making sure to use the best fresh coffee-grounds, the ones Caleb loved.

By the time she had prepared shed-loads of chocolate-chip waffles, coffee and juice, Pogue, Sarah and Reid had all stumbled into the kitchen, following the scents wafting out of the kitchen.

"You've got _wings_, baby," Reid said, leaning down to kiss Emmeline's neck; she idly slapped his cheek and he chuckled groggily, reaching for a mug of steaming black coffee. "You're an angel." He linked an arm around her shoulders as she removed the last waffle from the iron and placed it on top of the stack, leaning against her heavily as he sipped his coffee. Pogue went straight for the half-and-half and the sugar-bowl and added both liberally to his coffee, wrinkling his nose when he tasted it; Pogue didn't like coffee.

"There's tea in the pot," Emmeline said, indicating the tea-pot. Reid's mother was English, and had given the families her love of a milky cup of PG Tips tea, and Emmeline preferred it over coffee. Pogue nodded, emptied his mug in the sink and refilled it with tea, adding a splash of milk.

"Where's Baby Boy?" Reid asked, blinking around the kitchen owlishly.

"He's still asleep," Emmeline said, observing Caleb shuffling into the room in his boxers and a t-shirt. He and Sarah caught each other's eyes and smiled, blushing subtly, and Emmeline focused on the waffles. Caleb and Sarah hadn't been dating very long—a couple of weeks at most; she wasn't a part of their normal lives and it was evident she had to work hard to fit in with them. Emmeline, never very good at making friends with kids who attended Spenser, hadn't really spoken to her brother's first girlfriend. She was friends with Kate, a girl Emmeline didn't very much like because of the way she treated Pogue—like he was dispensable, as if she could find someone better. _Pogue_ could do much better than Kate, Emmeline knew, and she wasn't the only one who thought it.

"Where'd he end up crashing?" Pogue asked, a glitter in his eyes.

"After you guys made him down a bottle of port wine, he managed to stumble up to my room, and _I_ had to take care of him," Emmeline said quietly; Reid smirked.

"Dude's such a lightweight," he chuckled.

"You made him down a bottle of_ port_?" Sarah said, staring at Reid, who grinned. Emmeline made a plate up and took it upstairs with a cup of tea, and found Tyler shuffling out of the bathroom, looking tousled and grumpy.

"I brought you some breakfast," Emmeline said quietly, placing the dish and the mug on the bedside cabinet, where the glass had been drained of water.

"Thanks," Tyler said croakily, sinking back onto the bed. He eyed her, taking in her outfit. "I didn't hear you getting ready."

"You've been pretty out of it," Emmeline shrugged. "The others are awake, but I think Reid's gonna go back to bed." Tyler nodded, cutting up his waffle and slowly chewing a mouthful.

"What's going on today?" Tyler grumbled.

"I don't know what everyone else is doing, but I'm going sailing," Emmeline said. "There won't be very many nice days left." Tyler nodded, and while he tried to eat everything on the plate, Emmeline set about organising what she had to do during the day. Apart from sailing, she had to finish several of the preemie hats she was knitting for the NICU at Ipswich City Hospital, she had her English paper to spell-check and revise, finish her History reading, and she needed Caleb's help with her math homework. Too bad it was a Sunday and Caleb would be hungover and lying on the sofa all day.

Grandpa was returning from Paris today; she had to have the house cleaned up and presentable so they could trash it themselves when they roller-bladed around the drawing-room and played hockey in the ballroom and did some of Grandpa's experimental artwork with paint-filled water-balloons and darts, stuff they used to decorate the children's ward at the hospital. If Caleb couldn't help her with her math, her grandfather could.

And their mother would be calling them at seven o'clock tonight, the first time she would be able to since going voluntarily into the best rehabilitation facility in Boston to "dry out" as Reid put it. The phone-call wasn't something Emmeline was looking forward to; she and her mother hadn't connected since they had gone out to buy Emmeline's first bra together.

Emmeline always got the feeling that her mother was somewhat disappointed in her. Whatever Grandpa said about it, Emmeline knew her mother got agitated that she wasn't the social butterfly their position and wealth and influence demanded; she didn't go to parties every night and wasn't surrounded by glittering Spenser friends. She didn't particularly like most society events—the exceptions were probably the girliest in the world; opera and ballet—and she didn't much like doing stuff at Spenser, but she had her own stuff that she was interested in, and didn't much care to try and fit in with the girls at Spenser when there was next to nothing she could ever talk about herself with them. She couldn't say, "Oh, I dropped my mother off at a rehab facility in Boston, then hung out with my brothers in my grandfather's bat-cave and practiced casting a few charms using our families' spell-books, locked myself in my room when my brother had a house-party and held Baby Boy's hair out of his face while he threw up. How about you?"

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Since she was little, when her grandfather would take her out sailing in his yacht, and taught her how to sail in the same little dinghy she still loved—the one she had named the _Possibility_, though it had been refinished and repainted since she was a little girl—she used to just sit and think. Now, sailing along the Ipswich coast, wrapped up in a life-vest and a pair of sunglasses, she _thought_.

Just before her Ascension, she had begun being plagued with dreams, nightmares that woke her yelling in the middle of the night; she had scared Caleb as much as she had scared herself, and had hoped that at her Ascension, they would stop. They had only gotten worse. It didn't matter what she did, what she _took_; Aspirin or Co-Codamol had no effect—they just kept coming.

But the black-eyed woman was new. She had never dreamt of her before, of that she was sure, but she was sure that whatever these dreams were about, they weren't a product of _her_ imagination. She didn't know who the children were either, but she knew the first nightmare she had ever had was of the little girl, holding out her hand out to her.

Sailing was one of her most tranquil hobbies; no matter what happened, when she got out onto the water, no matter what she was trying to escape from at home or at school or with the boys, when she set sail from the boat-yard she either left it all behind or worked through it in the silence, broken only by the sounds of the waves. It had long ago ceased to be boring when she didn't have anyone to talk to or listen to.

Sailing the _Possibility_ along the Ipswich coastline, she could get no leads on why she was the only one in the Covenant who had such nightmarish dreams and skull-splitting headaches… She didn't know who the little girl was or who the woman in her dream was, but something about them made her think whatever they were about, it was urgent.

When she returned home in her new 2010 Range Rover—an eighteenth birthday-gift from her grandfather—the only people home were Caleb, Pogue, Reid, and Tyler had gone back to sleep in Emmeline's bed. During the summer, this wasn't an unusual occurrence and Emmeline knew to just get on with everything she needed to do, or she'd spend her entire life tiptoeing around the boys.

Caleb wasn't prone on the sofa; his eyes were black as he stood in the drawing-room in his boxers and robe, and when Emmeline walked into the room, sensing her twin using his magic, he gestured her to join him.

"Would you like help clearing up?" she asked, and he nodded; smiling, Emmeline joined him in the centre of the room. Standing back-to-back, they both made their eyes flash while summoning their magic. In one great sweep, they waved their arms over their halves of the room and everything out of place soared back to its original position, vomit and alcohol stains disappeared, curtains righted themselves, furniture repaired itself of chips, glasses became whole once more, the scent of stale alcohol and old vomit disappeared and every plastic red cup, alcohol bottle and scrap of food dropped on the floor vanished.

"Very Dumbledore of us," Caleb remarked, when the last piece of a shattered chips bowl melded into place with the rest and they stepped apart. "Where've you been all day?"

"Sailing," Emmeline said. "I'm off to the study to finish that English essay."

"I thought you'd already done it," Caleb frowned.

"It's five-hundred words over the limit; I have to shave it down," Emmeline shrugged. "And I need help with my math later."

"Oh, sure," Caleb nodded. "What time does Grandpa get home?"

"Noon tomorrow," Emmeline said.

"Oh." Caleb frowned. He missed their grandfather as much as Emmeline did, though he had only been gone a week; he had visited Pogue's grandmother, the beloved expatriate, in Paris, and had promised to bring back Emmeline a lot of presents.

"Where's Reid and Pogue?" Emmeline asked.

"Pogue's showering—Reid's in the kitchen making grilled-cheese for us all," Caleb said. "Have you seen Baby Boy?"

"Yeah, he's asleep in my bed," Emmeline grumbled. "I don't think he's moved since I took him breakfast this morning."

"Is he, like, _alive_?" Caleb asked.

"Yeah, I checked his pulse," Emmeline said dryly, and Caleb cracked a smile. Emmeline made her way to her grandfather's study, the place where she and Caleb and Grandpa did much of their bonding; Grandpa loved to read in his fireside armchair with his feet up, a good book and a little glass of sherry. She and Caleb had twin desks pushed back-to-back under a blue Yves Klein painting, both desks antique Louis-style, furnished with MacBook laptops, decorative glasswork and, on Emmeline's, a little arrangement of purple anemones, thistles and yellow ranunculus. Their grandfather had made the space for them when they started ninth grade, and the wireless connection to the printer hidden in one of the polished sideboards was a life-saver.

Setting down a cup of tea and taking her English binder and notebook from her backpack resting against one of the legs of her desk, she sighed, logged in to her laptop and found the folder containing her recent English papers. Her essay on _Richard_ _III_ was five-hundred words over the two-thousand word limit; she couldn't help it if her Grandpa had majored in Shakespearean Literature at Harvard University and that he had taken her to see Shakespeare plays since she had first seen the ballet of _Romeo and Juliet_ performed when she was six years old.

Two hours later, when she had finally revised her essay enough that she was only one hundred words over the limit—something her teacher could forgive her for, because she just couldn't see any other way of writing what she wanted to say than how she already had—she printed off a fresh copy and her bibliography and bound them in a transparent presentation-folder. First thing on Monday she would hand it in to the student office on campus, where all their essays were handed in.

After refreshing her mug of tea, and checking her emails (disappointing) and going on Amazon to order several new books, two complete series of supernatural romances and a Georgian historical romance series, and several CDs, she turned to her History reading, making detailed notes and cross-referencing with her class-notes and making a list of questions to ask during her lecture next week.

When she found Caleb he was in the game-room, playing on his X-box with the others, all still in either pyjamas or the same clothes they had worn the night before; Tyler was still missing. Emmeline took a cup of tea up to Tyler and roused him from sleep, wafting the scents of a fresh donut just over his nose. Kicking him out of her bed and into her shower, she retrieved her knitting-bag and her iPod and went back downstairs to sit in the game-room with the boys, completely ignoring the digital carnage they created with enemy forces, and focused on completing the last of a set of preemie hats she was taking over to the NICU on Wednesday afternoon when she went to give some of the kids in the children's ward a music-lesson.

Freshly showered but wearing the same clothes he had partied in, (which, like the clothes Reid and Pogue wore, Emmeline had thrown into the washing-machine early this morning) Tyler emerged downstairs and sat on the sofa beside her, where she sat curled up and knitting, her book tucked under her leg until she had finished her knitting. When she finished the little preemie hat, Tyler, curled up and dozing, sat fiddling with it while she pulled out _Wuthering Heights_ and picked up where she had left off last night.

When the boys decided they were too hungry to continue mutilating zombies, Emmeline thought she might as well accompany them to Nicky's, where, once again, they met up with Kate and Sarah. They grabbed a few tables in a corner, far enough from the crowd that Emmeline could read in peace but close enough to the action that the social-butterflies in their group were happy. Their table was spread with burgers, fries, onion-rings, tater-tots, BLT-sandwiches, fried fish and lobster-rolls, grilled-cheese sandwiches, milkshakes, sodas and chilli-cheese fries, the ultimate in greasy hangover food.

"Why don't you come play pool with us?" Tyler asked quietly, leaning close to Emmeline; she glanced up from her page and glanced over at the pool-tables, where Aaron and Bordy and the little short bottle-blonde kid she could never remember the name of stood sulking while Reid counted the cash he had just hustled from them. Any moment now, a fight would break out between them; it always did; it was inevitable. Reid had that effect on people. Emmeline glanced back at Tyler, her cheeks warming at his expression, but she shook her head. She had only come out for the food; they had run out of food at home, thanks to Caleb's party, and until either she or Caleb got to the grocery-store, they would have to survive off Ipswich's melange of restaurants and diners.

She just wanted to read a little bit, and maybe when she got home, go for a few laps in her family's heated indoor swimming-pool. She might watch a movie when she climbed into bed, but play pool in this loud and obnoxious, stifling bar wasn't really what she wanted to do.

"I'm okay just reading for a little bit," she said quietly. Tyler's mouth tweaked to one side thoughtfully.

"What're you reading?"

"Wuthering Heights," Emmeline said, showing him the front-cover briefly. He frowned subtly.

"Wasn't that the novel we read last semester?" he asked thoughtfully.

"Yeah. You and Reid didn't read it though," she reminded him. "You got me to give you my copy of the new serialisation with Tom Hardy." Judging by Tyler's expression, he couldn't remember it; she doubted he had even watched it; most of his and Reid's homework was done using Wikipedia and hers or Pogue's notes and essays.

"Is it any good?" Tyler asked curiously.

"I think so. It's the best gothic romance ever written—in my opinion," Emmeline added, blushing a little bit. She wasn't one for _Jane Eyre_, and _Great Expectations_ was just boring. But _Wuthering Heights_—be still her heart! No matter how many times she read it, she couldn't fall out of love with Heathcliff or Hareton. Her opinion of Cathy varied each time she read it, depending on what mood she was in when she reading it.

"And…what were you knitting that little hat thing for this afternoon?" Tyler asked, frowning subtly. It wasn't very surprising that he was asking such basic questions about her hobbies and interests; while the boys were all as close as friends or brothers could be, she had always been the "only girl," and as puberty had struck them all, she had been left to her own devices to entertain herself and become the woman she was now. She knew everything there was to know about each of her boys, but she had always felt like the outsider, the oddity, and when the boys talked about sex and girls and video-games and Family Guy, she was at a loss.

"I make hats for charity, for the little premature babies in the NICU at Ipswich Hospital," Emmeline explained.

"Oh," Tyler said—and Reid called him over, loudly, to the pool tables. "I'll—see you later."

A little distracted by Tyler's show of interest, Emmeline watched him and Reid play pool from afar for a little while; while it wasn't uncharacteristic for Tyler to be sweet and concerned, he had been about as observant as any of the other boys when it came to her for most of their adolescence. When they were kids, if he saw she was bored of playing Mario on the Nintendo 64, he would grab two pairs of roller-blades and they'd go downtown to Cold Stone for an ice-cream via the city library, where Emmeline used to rent about a dozen books a week until Grandpa had given her a debit card with a very generous weekly allowance for clothes, books, movies, craft-supplies, theatre tickets and CDs she could want.

The last time he had ever truly observed her as a separate entity from Caleb, as a girl, was their promotion-dance from eighth to ninth grade, the first year of the high-school block at Spenser Academy, which they had all attended since kindergarten. He had been the second person to ever tell her she was beautiful, when he had seen her in the red dress she had worn to the dance with her hair up and a lick of red-tinted lip-gloss; her grandpa had been the first.

Tyler had changed over the summer; his jaw had strengthened and his cheekbones had really popped; he had always had the prettiest, most enviable eyes she had ever seen, and had garnered him the nickname "Baby Boy" since they were all old enough to tease the youngest member of their generation. He still dressed in a kind of grungy, skater, rock-fan way, but he had his own spin on it, occasionally wearing cult-classic 80s t-shirts—his favourite t-shirt was his _Back to the Future_ t-shirt, because it was his favourite movie. He'd gotten rid of his man-bangs since the Fall Fest dance, when Emmeline, annoyed that his hairstyle completely ruined the effects of his suit, had combed his hair out of his face. Now, his dazzling sapphire eyes and his mega-watt smile were easily visible, and Emmeline frowned when she realised that more than a few of the teenage girls frequenting Nicky's and giggling over by the pool-tables as they watched Tyler and Reid play were eyeing him up like he was a porterhouse steak or a 90%-off sale-bin at Sephora.

Back at home, still thinking about the way the girls at Nicky's had been looking at Tyler, Emmeline swam forty laps in the pool, showered, did her hair and climbed into bed in a fresh pair of pyjamas, clicked play and sank against her pillows with her knitting-needles while she watched _Seven Brides for Seven Brothers_, which she had been in the mood for since she finished her History reading.

She dreamed of the little girl again; this time, she was crying, petrified with fear, and still soaking wet, as if she had been doused with water or gone swimming. When Emmeline woke the next morning, she could remember the girl having said something, and hastily wrote down what it was before she could forget.

* * *

**A.N.**: Please review! I know it's a slow build and there's not much dialogue, but like _The Age of Innocence_, it's all in the details. Who am I kidding—I just want to write a bunch of stuff to set the scene before I get to the juicy parts!


	3. The History Girl

**A.N.**: Please review!

* * *

**The Twinkling**

Chapter Three

_The History Girl_

* * *

Her first class on a Monday was second-period Italian after a study-hall period, which she and Caleb always stayed home for. There was no point driving to Spenser if they didn't have to be there; Emmeline spent the hours before school at the bagel-shop downtown with Caleb, eating a bagel with smoked-salmon, cream-cheese and red-onion and capers, reading the newspaper, while Caleb finished a bit of last-minute homework.

Like the dutiful twin-sister she was, Emmeline _tsked_ at his lack of responsibility at having partied till the early hours of the morning and spent yesterday lying on the couch playing video-games rather than finishing his homework and studying for their test on Shakespeare on Thursday, however, she bought him a bag of donut-holes and a coffee to tide him over until lunch.

"I can't wait till Grandpa gets home," she said, smiling softly to herself. She had given her grandfather a list of books and things she would have liked for him to find and buy for her, if she couldn't have gone with him to visit Pogue's grandma.

"Yeah, I've missed him," Caleb agreed, eyeing the sports page. "The Bruins are playing at home soon."

"Yeah, I saw that," Emmeline smiled. "We should go."

"Yeah we should!" Caleb grinned. "Hey, when's the opening night at the Boston Ballet?"

"Soon," Emmeline said, checking the Garfield comic-strip. "And Grandpa's promised to take me."

"In the box?"

"Where else?" Emmeline said.

"Maybe if Mom gets out soon enough…"

"Don't rush her, Caleb," Emmeline said quietly, glancing up from the comic-strips. "If she's not going to come out of rehab in her own time, knowing she's ready, she shouldn't leave at all."

"You don't want her to come home." It was a statement, not a question, and completely untrue.

"I don't want Mother to do a Yo-yo trick with that rehab facility. If she's not ready to leave, she'll relapse as soon as she gets out," Emmeline said sagely. "That's what the people at the centre said, and no matter how much we want her to get better, she has to do it on her own time."

"Are you going to go see her when she gets visiting privileges?" Caleb asked, not looking at her. Emmeline squirmed in her seat uncomfortably.

"I don't know. Maybe. The doctors said it might be important for us to go and see her, to help her realise why she's doing this," Emmeline said. It was just so…so _O.C._ to go and visit her mother in a rehab facility for her alcoholism. She and her mother hadn't gotten along during the best of times for many years—all because Emmeline was an unsatisfactory daughter who didn't like throwing parties and didn't have a thousand friends on Facebook. She didn't understand that there were certain things that Emmeline's magic prohibited; like truly _honest_ friendships and getting close to a boy. She was eighteen years old and had never had a boyfriend. Aaron in sixth grade didn't count. He was a bastard now.

"She wants to see you," Caleb said, wiping his sugary fingers on a napkin. "She told me so last night, on the phone." It had been a _very_ awkward conversation on the phone last-night with their mother. She had cried during most of it; Emmeline had cringed during her time on the phone with her. It was the detox; the doctors had explained that their mother wouldn't have any phone or visiting privileges until at least seventy-two hours after she had checked in.

Emmeline shifted awkwardly in her seat. She didn't know if she was ready to see her mother yet. She had seen Evelyn Danvers completely off her face drunk, ranting about their dad, angry and upset, crying her eyes out over a failed waffle, almost burning the kitchen down; she had seen her unconscious in the bathtub and curled up on the floor by the toilet in a vomit-stained chemise; she had seen her asleep on the lawn, the sprinklers on, holding a half-empty bottle of Jack. She had seen her crying her eyes out over a photo of their dad and blubbering stories about him, and Emmeline had seen her in a drunken-induced rage, trying to destroy the drawing-room. They'd had to use magic on her that time to stop her.

Seeing her mother detoxing had to be worse than seeing her off her face drunk, didn't it? Her mother had been drinking since Emmeline was about fourteen, since she and Caleb started freshman year and had been forced to move out of the dorms because their mother had passed out in the tub, and they had to take care of her.

Driving to school was awkward; perhaps Caleb regretted having brought up their mother, because he kept silent all the way to school, not mentioning the rehab facility or the phone-call last night. They parked up in the student parking-lot (which was comparatively tiny, since most students were live-in and everything was within a good walking-distance from Spenser) and made their way into the front building, in which Emmeline had her Italian lecture; Caleb went off to the Garwin Building, in which he had a Physics tutorial, and Emmeline was, once again, left to her own devices while the clock ticked closer to nine a.m. and her AP Italian 4 class.

* * *

Sitting down in the History amphitheatre for a gruelling double-period seminar after break, she grabbed her textbook and flipped her notebook open to the next fresh page, grabbed her pencil-case and crossed her knees, observing the rest of the class filing into the lecture theatre.

Mr Hoffman stood at his desk preparing a pile of presentation folders, his briefcase open and retrieving his lecture notes, the title of the seminar subject already projected onto the screen. Emmeline eyed the stack of presentation folders; their essays were being passed back today. A surge of excitement razzed her and she suppressed a smile of anticipation; she had worked _hard_ on that last History paper.

Someone walked past the teacher's desk and Emmeline caught sight of the hairstyle; Tyler had, since the Fall Fest, retained the hairstyle she had made him adopt for the first formal dance of the year; slight side-parting, hair combed away from his pretty face. He looked _very_ handsome in his pressed white shirt, crimson and gold tie, royal-navy blazer and dark-grey pants. All the boys did, but Tyler in particular caught her eye. He wore a dark navy pea-coat over his blazer and a golden-oatmeal scarf draped around his neck; the days were getting a lot colder; by the time Thanksgiving rolled around, there would be snow on the ground. Tyler caught her eye and smiled, flashing his beautiful white teeth, and climbed up to drop his leather satchel beside her backpack.

"Hey," he said quietly, leaning in to give her a hug, something only Reid and Tyler ever did. Pogue and Caleb were more the knuckle-knocking types, even with her. But she always got hugs from Tyler and Reid. "How are you?"

"I'm okay. How's your head today?" Emmeline asked, smiling; Tyler blushed slightly.

"It's a lot better," he said, sighing. He glanced at her and blushed a little darker. "Listen, I just wanted to say…you know, thanks, for taking care of me."

"You're welcome," Emmeline flushed. "Not like I haven't done it before."

"Yeah," Tyler blushed, glancing down at Mr Hoffman. "Hey, I, uh, I heard you talked to your mom…"

"Yeah, last night," Emmeline sighed heavily. Had Caleb told _all_ the boys about it? Usually it was only Pogue he revealed his deepest and darkest thoughts to.

"How was that?" Tyler asked, dragging his dog-eared and tattered notebook out of his bag. Emmeline shrugged noncommittally, and Tyler nodded sagely. "Kinda weird, very awkward…"

"_So_ awkward," Emmeline sighed. "I know I should be supportive and try and help her through this, but… I don't know."

"You can't forget what she was like," Tyler said, and Emmeline nodded again, glancing covertly at one of her oldest friends. Tyler was quiet, shy, but he was very observant. That was his thing; he was quiet and slightly withdrawn from anyone he didn't know too well, but he always knew the right thing to say or who to give a hug to when he suspected they were feeling down.

"Settle down, please," Mr Hoffman called, and the class fell quiet; only a few at the back continued to whisper, regaling each other with the weekend's gossip. "Now, the first order of business; I have your last papers ready and graded. While I hand them out, please copy the following questions down; we shall be discussing them in the course of our seminar." He clicked on the computer and a fresh slide appeared, with several questions typed up. Emmeline copied them down, waiting for Mr Hoffman to approach her with her essay.

"Tyler—good effort," Mr Hoffman said. "Next time, try using a few more textbooks for your resources, and make sure to spell-check. You lost a few marks for basic grammar errors." Tyler nodded and eyed the B marked in red at the top corner of his essay.

"Ah, my star pupil," Mr Hoffman said, smiling broadly when he produced Emmeline's essay from the small pile still lingering in his arms. "As always, excellent work; your analytical skills have really matured. Excellent research, too; I was impressed with your bibliography. A grade well-earned!" He chuckled and Emmeline smiled, as she received the A+ essay; '_Sexism and Opportunism during the Salem Witch Trials: Why Women were Targeted_.'

"Now," Mr Hoffman called, when the last essay had been given out and he had called everyone to attention. "We've gone over the Salem Witch Trials. I thought we would move on to the more obscure local legends and histories our town boasts. Ipswich has a long and very colourful history; five of the original colonists' descendents sit amongst us, and I'm sure their next essay projects will be _extremely_ well researched." Mr Hoffman eyed Reid, sprawled halfway up the amphitheatre seats, half-asleep, with disbelief, but his eyes twinkled when they settled on Emmeline. "We will be looking, over the next fortnight, at Ipswich history and local legends. So, where did this town begin?"

It was always gratifying to sit in a class where Emmeline knew the answers to all the questions and considerably more even than the teacher. It was probably the only class Tyler and Reid could both answer questions without having to look at their neighbour's paper or notes. Emmeline took notes out of habit and necessity; she and Caleb corrected Mr Hoffman several times on the accuracy of the notes he was reading from; the founding families were from Suffolk county; Oliver Garwin was actually a landed gentleman but who had experience with carpentry; Robert "Robin" Simms was also a member of the landed gentry, the best hunter in the county, who tanned his own pelts. Charles Danvers III was the younger son of an English duke and had moved his wife Mary to the New World; their first child, Isabel, was born during the passage. He had become governor of the original Ipswich colony. Isaac Parry was the descendent of a famous knight favoured by Queen Elizabeth, an excellent horseman and skilled battle general.

The only descendent of John Putnam, Chase Goodwin-Pope, had disappeared a few weeks ago. They had heard nothing of his whereabouts, and couldn't confirm whether he was dead or not. They had the fathers searching the area for any body that could be his, and scrying for him, but they couldn't find a trace of him anywhere.

John Putnam had, once, been married, though. As Mr Hoffman wrote out the names of the original families—Emmeline's descendents; Charles Danvers III, his wife Mary, their children Isabel, Dorcas, Arthur and William—she noticed the Putnam family-tree. John Putnam had been married to a woman named Hannah. They had two children, Ruth and Nathaniel…but where had they gone? Why had the only descendent of John Putnam been illegitimate? What had happened to Ruth and Nathaniel? The name Ruth…

Sudden realisation hit her; she knew who the little girl from her dream was. A little girl in a plain dress, her hair covered in a dainty white cap, barely six years old… Ruth Putnam.

Resisting the urge to smack herself in the forehead for her oversight of the most obvious facts about her dreams—that they all featured images and words from documents about the original Ipswich colony—she waited until lunch to hastily scribble down what she had realised; that the key to her strange dreams was in discovering what happened to Ruth Putnam. In all her studies of the original families, she couldn't remember coming across that name. Maybe she just wasn't looking in the right place.

"Now, your next assignment is due on the fifteenth of November; I want you all to start thinking about what you're going to research; remember, your essays must be about local history," Mr Hoffman said, as the second hour of their seminar was up and everyone scrabbled to get to lunch. "Mr Garwin, please stay behind; I wish to speak to you about your paper."

"Hey, I'm gonna wait for Reid," Tyler said. "We were gonna go into town for lunch. You wanna come?"

"Yeah, okay," Emmeline said, smiling.

Five minutes later, Reid emerged, looking vengeful and annoyed; he hated being reprimanded by their teachers, but he never put the effort into his schoolwork that would _stop_ their teachers getting on his case. Reid was a really smart guy; he just had a lot of stuff going on at home. Most of the time he was driving to and from Boston, where his mother lived full-time so she could be in the centre of the social network; his dad was sick, and making everyone anxious by not taking his medication. His records would show that, for the first two years of high-school, he had been a straight-A student; now, he was too anxious about his dad, too annoyed with his mom, and trying to make himself feel better all the time, that he didn't do his homework, or study for tests, and it was up to them to help write his essays and use magic to fill his empty test papers and sometimes use magic to make it appear that Reid was in fact sitting in class when he had really decided to take an unexpected road-trip or was curled up in a ball under Emmeline's duvet with the most horrendous hangover in the world and no clue what he had done the night before. Everyone was worried about him, but he responded as well to concern as he did to condescension.

Exiting the main building, Emmeline frowned and then jumped into action, recognising the inconspicuous (as far as they went) limousine parked out front. As she approached the car, the door opened, and a ruggedly handsome, dark-haired man in his early-sixties emerged, a slow, quiet smile lifting the corners of his lips. He had very dark eyes and salt-and-pepper stubble, his skin was sun-coarsened, but there was no mistaking him as anything but a blue-blood; he wore a custom-tailored suit, the top button of his silk shirt undone, a satin handkerchief completely contrasting the dark-navy of his pinstripe suit and the white of his shirt tucked into his breast pocket.

Grandpa Robin—Robert Danvers II, ex Mayor of Ipswich, ex Senator of Massachusetts and Emmeline's best-friend—was unmistakeable, and the coolest grandpa in the entire world, in Emmeline's mind. She wasn't the only one; as soon as they saw him, Reid and Tyler dashed over, on her heels, to say hi.

While all the other grandparents and aunts and uncles and even parents had left Ipswich, moved on to bigger and glitzier, more fabulous homes, Grandpa Robin had remained in Ipswich; he had helped Emmeline and Caleb's mother raise them, with their grandmother, since their dad disappeared the Halloween they were nine years old. And it spoke of how cool he was that Grandpa Robin was about as emotionally mature as Reid and Tyler were, which made him the height of fun, the best person to hang out with in the world. They always forgot that he was 'old' when they were hanging out with him, because he goofed around so much, told the most rib-cracking stories and had taught the boys everything they could know about how to handle the 'fair sex.' He'd taught all of them how to roller-blade by the time they were five and by the age of eight, the boys were all enrolled in ice-hockey lessons; Emmeline hadn't liked figure-skating and instead had chosen to practice ballet.

"Hey kids," Grandpa Robin grinned, completely disregarding his custom-tailored suit as he threw his arms around his only granddaughter and squished her in a huge hug. "Have you missed me?" he murmured in her ear, holding her tight, and Emmeline gave him a squeeze before releasing him so that Reid and Tyler could have their turn; Grandpa Robin was the product of an insipid mother and emotionally-crippled father, and had vowed young that his kids and grandchildren would never grow up being told that children were neither seen nor heard.

"Grandpa, what're you doing here?" Caleb and Pogue had arrived, both looking eager and excited; whenever Grandpa Robin appeared at Spenser, it usually meant he had created an uncle who'd died to get them out of school for a few hours to go into Boston and watch a baseball game or do something else really fun like going to Six Flags or going out on his yacht.

"I'm here to take you all for a steak lunch," Grandpa grinned, gesturing to the limousine. "Hop on in."

"Ah, Rob-man, you are a _legend_!" Pogue grinned, launching himself into the limousine without any further encouragement needed. Reid paused at the door to the limousine and fixed Grandpa Robin with a look straight in the eye, blew a quick kiss, and said, "I love you," and disappeared. Tyler smiled shyly and ducked into the limousine after his best-friend. Caleb grinned and followed, and Grandpa Robin smiled.

"My dear," he said, offering his hand, and he helped her into the limousine the way a gentleman would his lady.

"I thought you only landed at noon," she said, settling into a seat and tucking her pleated golden-oatmeal skirt under her thighs.

"Well, if I'd told you I got an earlier flight, it would have completely ruined the surprise," Grandpa Robin said, and Emmeline smiled. "So, what've you been up to while I've been away, other than the party I know nothing about?"

The boys' eyes all widened and they tried not to exchange shifty, guilty glances.

"Oh, come _on_, guys! Your mom left all those bottles of alcohol lying around and I skipped the continent over the weekend," Grandpa Robin chuckled. "You're not telling me you _didn't_ have a party?"

"It was epic," Reid quipped, grinning, and Grandpa Robin chuckled.

It was just like Grandpa Robin to show up at Spenser, completely unexpected, and take them off to the best and most expensive steak restaurant in town; sizzling steaks and all kinds of sides were produced; Emmeline polished off her filet steak with garlic mash and broccoli-gratin, sipping a small glass of red wine, while the boys ate their way through huge porterhouse steaks and beers. Grandpa didn't care if they were still in school; all of the families had the quasi-European mentality that the more they were exposed to alcohol the less likely they were to abuse it. Drinking a little glass of wine with a rich dinner was a lot better than, say, downing a bottle of port wine for a dare, which she pointed out to Tyler, who was sitting next to her and eyeing her cheesy broccoli.

Before the hour's end, Grandpa Robin's limousine stopped outside Spenser's main building and they all filed out; Emmeline paused to kiss her grandfather's cheek, promising to see him later, and had to run up the front steps to get to her Classical Civilisation class.

Classics was a bit of a time-waster, really; they learned about Classical architecture and sculpture; they read _Agamemnon_, _Medea_ and _Oedipus_. At the end of every week, their last class on a Friday morning (Spenser kids always had Friday afternoons off) they watched 'classical' movies; _Troy_, _300_, _Clash of the Titans_, _Jason and the Argonauts_, and Emmeline's personal favourite, Disney's _Hercules_. Their teacher was so jovial and fun that they rarely got anything done, but the class trip to Greece last year had been more than worth signing up to take the class in the first place. One whiff of Ouzo had Reid retching ever since Tolon! The Greece trip was the inspiration behind the sailing trip around the Aegean that Emmeline wanted to do for charity when she graduated Spenser.

She was eager to get home, and spent all of Trigonometry doodling in her dream-diary, even though it was her worst subject and she would regret it later, and was so out of it that Reid managed to draw all over her hand during Art before she noticed. Swimming practice meant she had only one more hour until she was home and could see her grandpa, and she beat Tyler and Reid in friendly races.

* * *

"Okay, dude, what the hell are you doing?" Reid asked, snatching the book out of Tyler's hands. Tyler scowled and glanced up, glaring at Reid as his best-friend dropped down to bounce once on his mattress and settled, flipping the book the right way up to read the title. "_Wuthering Heights_?"

"I got it out of the library," Tyler shrugged, making a grab for the book, feeling slightly flushed. He and Reid talked about a lot of stuff—practically everything—but talking to him about Emmeline felt…kind of taboo.

"The _library_?" Reid blurted, his eyes almost bugging out of his face. "Wait—you know where the library _is_?"

"Yeah, I've been there a couple times; you might wanna try it out. All the cool kids are doing it," Tyler said drily, snatching the book out of Reid's loose grip.

"No need to snatch. Why're you reading a chick book anyway?" Reid asked, and he sat up straight, hand going to the plastic bag on the bedside table, unearthing a copy of the 2009 production of _Wuthering Heights_ featuring Tom Hardy, and turned to gape at Tyler.

"I saw Emmeline reading it and thought, you know, we could at least make an effort and talk about stuff _she_ likes for once," Tyler said. But _damn_, was this book difficult to get through. He was sorely tempted to just stick the DVD on and watch it, rather than struggle through 19th Century-speak, but what was the point of doing something if he didn't do it properly. And besides, he had gotten marked down on his Wuthering Heights essay last year because he'd written that Heathcliff shot himself at the end of the book—he'd gotten marked down because the teacher _knew_ he hadn't read the book; apparently, Heathcliff just wasted away from lack of food.

Reid looked at him as if he was speaking a different language.

Tyler couldn't help it—he had always loved Emmeline. Maybe not as much as he loved her now, but he had always loved her. First, with the innocence of childhood, when she had been his best-friend and they'd sat in his kitchen on the island, swinging their legs and eating strawberry Pop-Tarts and drinking chocolate-milkshakes for breakfast. Then he'd started noticing that she wore pleated skirts, and he'd been the first to notice when her breasts had started filling out her tight swimsuit. She always wore high-legged black swimsuits that crossed over her shoulder-blades, and for several months, the only thing he'd been able to think of was wanting to trace his finger along the edge of the hip of her swimsuit. When they curled up watching a movie or when all of them fell asleep after a long night, he had noticed that her body felt different, that her skin was smooth and always warm and that her gentle curves were exactly matched to fill the places he didn't have any. He always felt it when her breasts pressed against him when they hugged, and he always knew that he enjoyed those hugs far too much.

He didn't know when the line had blurred between friend and sexual fantasy, but all he could think about when they were together was hugging Emmeline, holding her hand and kissing the curve of her jawbone, nibbling on her little ears, running his hands over her bare skin and holding all the places he visualised when he hid under his heavy duvet at night and knew Reid was asleep.

The time he and Emmeline had shared a sleeping-bag because there weren't enough to go round, when Reid had had a house-party and they'd all dragged bags out to the trampoline to sleep was probably one of the best memories of his summer, because she'd been wearing a tiny baby tee and had taken her skirt off rather than have it fly up by her waist whenever she jumped on the trampoline.

Every time he heard 'Eye of the Tiger,' he saw Emmeline sitting in the passenger seat of his car outside the drive-thru dairy downtown, lip-synching and doing a little dance along to it. He and Reid had videoed it on their phones, but had yet to add it to Facebook and YouTube.

He loved that, only around them, Reid and Tyler, was Emmeline an extrovert. With everyone else, she closed up like an oyster protecting a surprise little pearl; she was the loveliest girl in the entire world; Tyler's mom loved her, and thought she'd make any guy the most wonderful wife, and since they were kids, Tyler knew Emmeline had always wanted a huge family. Yes, she had been eight years old when she'd declared she wanted thirteen babies, but her desire hadn't changed to have a real, affectionate family.

When they had parties at their houses and got a little tipsy, they used to go out on the lawn and just lie, watching the stars, their fingers curled around each other's and just _talk_, in a way that he couldn't with Reid, and she didn't with any of the others. He knew she suffered from loneliness, but she would never make waves by saying anything to them about it. He knew it couldn't be easy being the only girl in their generation of the coven, but considering, she handled it well.

Tyler knew Caleb still hadn't mentioned to Emmeline that he'd told Sarah about them. He knew Emmeline's hidden temper well enough to know that he didn't want to be anywhere nearby when she found out.

He returned to Heathcliff and Cathy and ignored Reid's remarks about Tyler's hidden sexuality. By dinnertime, he had fallen in love with Cathy, and Reid got annoyed that Tyler was blabbing on about how great the book was, and that it wasn't about love at all, it was about _hate_ and passion and revenge.

* * *

**A.N.**: I know, I know—nothing happened much, but Grandpa Robin is back at home, which is good; I need him for the plot. Cos every girl needs her grandpa to cry to. Wish I had mine… That bastard cancer… Oh, by the way—Grandpa Robin is supposed to look like a little bit older Jeffrey Dean Morgan (_Supernatural_, _The Watchmen_).


	4. Sleeping with a Friend's Bunny

**A.N.**: A long chapter; enjoy!

* * *

**The Twinkling**

Chapter Four

_Sleeping with a Friend's Bunny_

* * *

"A research project on local history?" Grandpa Robin said, his dark eyebrows, so like Caleb's, quirking. "I thought this prep school was supposed to challenge you and prepare you for college. That's _easy_."

"Well, I'm not going to just write a report on our family history," Emmeline said. "That would just be lazy." Grandpa chuckled and Emmeline smiled, passing him a fork. They were having a simple and decadent dinner; freshly prepared ratatouille.

"Not to mention boring," Grandpa said, and Emmeline smiled.

"Why boring?"

"A bunch of politicos and debutantes," Grandpa said. "You want interesting history, you have to look outside the well-known legends. No more '_witch-trials originated in Ipswich_'; that's boring. Everyone who grew up in this part of Massachusetts knows that. You want something good to write about, look at all the obscure stuff that was never solved."

"Like what?" Emmeline asked interestedly.

"Well, since you asked," Grandpa grinned, "as soon as we finish dinner, we have to go to the bat-cave." Emmeline smiled and rolled her eyes; ever since they had assumed their powers at puberty, they had been granted to the 'secret sanctum,' the 'bat-cave;' the secret room beneath the house devoted to magic. It was accessed only by pressing a few choice keys on an upright piano set against a mirror-lined wall of glass shelves in Grandpa's study.

Finishing up the ratatouille and using her magic to do the dishes, Emmeline followed her grandfather into the study, watched him press the choice keys that allowed the mechanisms keeping the hidden door in place to move aside and the door to swing open. Down a small elevator shaft and they entered the 'bat-cave,' a room that seemed to have been stuck in the 1890s, or on the set of the new Sherlock Holmes film; armchairs were stuffed in amongst shelves and bookcases and dressers and cabinets filled with books and trinkets and the most random things in the world; odd tables that belonged nowhere else, paintings, boxes, _anything_; Grandpa had his specific armchair by the one magical window—magical because they were underground and sunshine poured in through it at all hours—and always kicked his feet up on the Moroccan table where they sometimes had tea, if they were down here long enough to need refreshments.

"So, what were you saying, about unsolved local legends?" Emmeline prompted quietly; the secret sanctum always gave her a quiet sense of awe. It made her feel as if she was a part of something special when she came down here, instead of just the socially introverted daughter of one of the wealthiest and oldest families in America.

"Well, there is a ton of stuff; ghost apparitions around the old colony; usually it's just kids goofing around, but sometimes their accounts sounded sincere enough that one of us had to go out there and sort it out," Grandpa said. "Never found much, though."

"No Blair Witch in the woods, then?" Emmeline smiled, and Grandpa chuckled darkly.

"No ma'am," he said. "There are ghost sightings, poltergeists, records of people disappearing, children seeing visions of an old ship coming into port."

"Ghost ships?"

"No—_ship_; just the one," Grandpa said. "They always describe it the very same. Then there are legends about the Massachusett tribe, the natives."

"Our families had a good relationship with them, didn't we?"

"Our families did, yes," Grandpa said solemnly. "They taught us their magic and we taught them ours; but the other families, the ones outside the coven… Well, every fourth-grader knows about how the English settlers treated the natives." Emmeline nodded, wrinkling her nose.

"So what are the legends?"

"Well, it goes that sometimes, on the clearest summer night, when the breeze is still, and the sun is just about to set, you can see Massachusett warriors emerge in their battle regalia," Grandpa said. "The legend goes, they're the spirits of the Massachusett warriors who fought in King Philip's War, lost their lives to the Ipswich townsfolk."

"How come our families and the natives got along so well?" Emmeline asked curiously.

"Records show that Isaac Parry's grandfather travelled the world; saw India, Africa, everywhere in between, before he decided that the best place for our families was where no man had been taught to fear our gifts," Grandpa said sadly. "Also taught him that nothing caused inferiority but personal belief, not the colour of someone's skin." They hadn't found their haven; the Englishmen who came with them across the sea sowed the seed of fear and distrust in their children, their friends, they had turned on the families who had settled them in their new home, hung one of the founders of Massachusetts.

The bat-cave was the best place to search out a really _great_ subject for study for her next essay. Yes, she had until halfway through next month to get the essay written by, but History was by far her best subject, and she loved learning everything there was to know about her home, and her family. She didn't know who in the hell the presidents of America were, but she could recite in correct order her descendents, starting with the English dukedom they had originated from.

Grandpa knew just where to look in the many books, antique newspapers and journals stashed in the bat-cave that would give Emmeline something fun and educational to research and write about, if not obscure. She was astonished that records had been made since 1701 about annual disappearances around Ipswich, up until about the 1890s—or perhaps someone had gone back and researched, really looked deep into the history of Ipswich, and found that there was a pattern…

"Where's Caleb tonight, anyway?" Grandpa asked; they had retreated back upstairs when Emmeline's eyes had started shivering due to the spidery, ancient handwriting of her ancestors, and Grandpa sat with his ankles crossed on the coffee-table, dressed in a smoking-jacket, his lips curled around a cigar that he didn't light—he hadn't smoked a cigarette or cigar since Grandma had died—a glass of whisky in his hand, listening to some opera emanating from the hidden surround-sound stereo system speakers.

"Dinner—with Sarah," Emmeline said, wrinkling her nose so her grandfather couldn't see, as she counted her stitches and continued knitting.

"How are you doing with that, by the way?" Grandpa asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you're not used to sharing Caleb, are you?"

"I do share Caleb. I've shared him since Pogue was born," Emmeline pointed out. "And then when Reid was born and then Tyler."

"You know what I mean. Another girl's never had his attention like this before," Grandpa said thoughtfully. "You know…your parents were a year younger than you two when they met. Did your mother ever tell you that?"

"Yeah," Emmeline said heavily. "She told me."

"Drove your grandmother and me stir-crazy, out late every night, running up the phone-bills talking to her past midnight when he couldn't see her, sneaking out of the window when he was grounded," Grandpa chuckled reminiscently. "Even got so bad I bought a shotgun."

"You bought a shotgun?"

"Yeah. He wasn't scared of _my_ magic once he Ascended," Grandpa said thoughtfully. "More powerful than any other kid in his generation, he was. Like you and Caleb."

"How come our family is so magically powerful?" Emmeline asked. It had bothered her for years, since she and the boys first got their powers. While she had gained hers a little later than the boys—damn puberty—her powers were manifest stronger than Reid or Pogue's. Tyler was powerful but he rarely used magic—or if he did, he was too smart to use it in front of Caleb and risk getting a verbal spanking.

* * *

Her dreams that night were strange—stranger than normal. She saw a tree, a very distinctive tree, ancient and withered, blackened with age and fire, and she couldn't for the life of it recall where she'd seen it before.

She sketched it over and over again on a notepad, until each of the pages beneath was marked with the shape of the tree, while she waited for Caleb to finish his Eggo waffles.

"Hey, what're you drawing?" Caleb asked, strolling into the foyer.

"Nothing. Something from my dream," Emmeline said, stowing the notepad in her backpack.

"Dirty," Caleb smirked, and Emmeline rolled her eyes. Her dreams were draining her of her energy; she drank the last of her milky tea, hovered the mug into the kitchen and walked out to Caleb's Mustang, slinging herself into the passenger seat. Her dreams were draining her energy and giving her aches and pains all over her body from tossing and turning all night long.

She was so distracted by her latest dream that Mr Waugh slammed his book right in front of her to make her pay attention when he asked her three times to answer one of his questions during English Literature. She had a free period after her English class and spent most of it cloistered up in the library, dozing in one of the hidden corners, giving the impression that she was reading. She slept through break, and reluctantly went off to her Italian lesson, doodling for much of it. These damn dreams were screwing with her GPA as well as her physical strength, and her teachers were noticing her distraction.

"Emmeline—a word, please," Mr Hoffman said, after her History lesson after lunch. Having a free-period after it, Emmeline had nothing to rush off to and walked over to the teacher's desk while the rest of the class filed out; Reid and Tyler waited for her just outside the doors.

"You've been very distracted lately," Mr Hoffman said, looking concernedly at her. "I understand your family is going through quite a few things—if you need someone to talk to, the counsellors are always ready to put things aside for you."

"Oh," Emmeline said, startled a little. She was so _tired_, and was almost swaying on her feet. She felt like she was sleep-deprived on top of the worst jetlag in the world. "No, I'm fine."

"Are you sure? This is the first lesson you've sat through silently," Mr Hoffman said.

"No, I'm fine, I just—I'm not sleeping well lately; nightmares," Emmeline said quietly. "That's all. I'll see you in tomorrow's lecture."

"Alright—well, go on," Mr Hoffman said, though he still looked concerned. "Off to your next lesson." Emmeline nodded and padded over to the doors; Tyler leaned against the wall, his nose uncharacteristically hidden in a book. Reid was playing Tetris on his iPod, and they glanced up when the doors opened.

"Hey," Tyler said, stowing his book in his blazer pocket. "Are you okay?"

"I'm really _tired_," Emmeline said miserably, punctuating her words with a large yawn she tried to conceal behind her hand. "I've been having the strangest nightmares recently."

"Strange nightmares—you mean stranger than the Rakshasa nightmare?" Reid asked.

"That was _your_ nightmare, and I told you not to watch that Supernatural episode on your own," Tyler said to him, and Reid shivered slightly.

"It was a killer clown," he said, shivering again. "Just not right."

"Well, thanks to you and your overactive imagination, we can't ever go to McDonalds," Tyler said drily, and Emmeline smiled tiredly. There was nothing like listening to the two brothers bantering good-naturedly. Emmeline yawned again, feeling dead on her feet.

"Hey," Tyler said quietly, as they made their way down the corridor, "if you want, you can go and crash in our dorm till your next class."

"Can I?" Emmeline sighed, gratitude rushing out in a great wave.

"Sure. I've got P.E. now, but if you want, go and let yourself into the dorm," Tyler said. "I'll come get you for your next lesson."

"Thank you, Tyler," Emmeline smiled sleepily, going up on her tiptoes to brush a kiss against Tyler's cheek, and she stalked off in direction of the dormitories. She didn't see Tyler put his fingertips to the cheek she had kissed, or the way his cheeks flushed as he covertly adjusted his pants as he watched her walk away in the pleated skirt that flipped slightly without her realising it.

Tyler and Reid's dormitory was a typical _guy_ dormitory; the walls were plastered with dirty posters and the floor was littered with clothes, both dirty and clean; a basket was overflowing with ironing that needed doing, and their desks overflowed with games consoles, wires, controllers, games cases and DVDs, iPod speaker-docks, laptops that had seen better days, and photographs and mementos were tacked to the walls, the woodwork, over their beds; Tyler's bed was the only part of the room that was in any way tidy, and clean; he loved going to bed in fresh sheets and never got into bed if it wasn't made first.

Plus, he still had his little knitted golden-oatmeal coloured rabbit that his grandmother had made for him when he was born. Emmeline stripped off her uniform and tugged one of Tyler's t-shirts over her head, took hold of Baby—the knitted rabbit—and climbed into Tyler's bed. She sank into it; it was the most comfortable bed beside her own she had ever slipped into. It was no wonder Tyler was always late to his first morning classes. Emmeline closed her eyes, and drifted off into a deep and peaceful sleep.

* * *

Tyler stepped quietly into his dormitory, half-expecting to find Emmeline cleaning and organising the room. It was the kind of thing she had done in the past; he and Reid used to let their room get messy enough that Emmeline would explode and demand they let her sort it out. She was the mother-hen; no matter what their parents were up to, they could always depend on Emmeline to mother them. She was the sweetest girl Tyler had ever known, born to take care of a family.

But the clothes were still thrown across the floor; books, movies, games were all still tossed here and there; naughty posters were still tacked to the walls, and the television was still dusty and marked with fingerprints. The room was quiet, and dark; Emmeline had drawn the curtains over the one tall window between the two beds. He clicked on one of the small desk lamps, and his chest cramped up.

Emmeline was curled up in his bed, tucked deep under his feather duvet, and he swore he could see a tuft of Baby's ear by her chest. In sleep, just as in waking, Emmeline was the most beautiful girl Tyler had ever seen, though her unique soft, sky-blue eyes were veiled by her short, thick eyelashes. Her beautiful lips were slightly parted, and her hair, so unlike her brother's, in that it was fair, a pretty, light cinnamon-brown touched with gold, was tousled around her head.

He noticed her skirt, blouse, vest and blazer folded neatly by the side of the bed next to her bag, and flicked his eyes back to her, recognising instantly the t-shirt she wore in lieu of pyjamas. _His_.

Her gentle breathing was the only thing that made noise in the room; he gently tried to wake her, knowing she would be upset with herself if she let herself sleep through her last class, but she wouldn't wake. Resiliently, she clung to sleep, and she had looked so tired when she left History with them that he didn't really want to wake her. She needed her sleep; he'd noticed during English Lit., that she had seemed so tired that her head kept nodding, hadn't been able to focus on the seminar at all and made Mr Waugh a little annoyed that one of his best students was so bored.

She looked so peaceful and so pretty that Tyler didn't have the heart to wake her and have that Glare of _Doom_ directed at him because he'd disrupted her sleep.

He left the room, making sure to lock the door so the house-chaperone couldn't get in and find Emmeline, and joined the boys for their math lesson, he used magic to conjure an illusion of Emmeline so that _her_ Trigonometry teacher wouldn't mark her as absent, and did the same during swimming practice, unsurprised that Emmeline didn't show up.

"What're you doing?" Caleb said quietly, his voice low and dangerous and warning.

"Emmy needed some help," Tyler shrugged. Caleb glanced at the illusory-Emmeline.

"If that's an illusion, where is Emme?" he asked.

"Asleep in my dorm," Tyler said. "She couldn't keep her head up during History."

"Yeah, I noticed that," Caleb said thoughtfully. "I think she's been having trouble sleeping."

"That's what she told Hoffman," Tyler said; he had been eavesdropping. "He seemed to think it might have something to do with your mom. She said it was nightmares."

"Yeah, I think she's been having bad dreams lately," Caleb said, frowning. "Did she skip her math class?"

"I sent an illusion, just so she wasn't marked down," Tyler said. Emmeline was, of course, the best at casting illusory spells; she could conjure them so powerfully that they actually could have been turned real by a few potions and spells. She used them when the boys were too hungover to move and they risked detentions or phone-calls home if they didn't show up for lessons.

After swimming practice, Tyler returned to the dormitory; Reid stayed behind to chat up a few cheerleaders who had joined the swim-team, and when Tyler entered the bedroom, he could have believed not a moment had passed since the last time; Emmeline was still in the exact same place she had been last time, still holding on to Baby, still buried deep in the comfort of his bed. A hand was curled delicately at her cheek, and she looked so young and sweet in her sleep. Tyler quietly went about changing into his casual clothing, throwing his shirt at the overflowing laundry-basket, and grabbed his math textbook and some paper, and sat on Reid's bed, working.

At nearly six, Emmeline jerked upright, like something out of The Exorcist, eyes wide and glassy, panting; she let out a choked yell, and Tyler had a heart-attack.

He had seen a lot of stuff—being Reid's roommate and all—but that was the scariest freaking thing he'd ever seen.

But Emmeline seemed more freaked out even than him; he slinked off the bed and squatted down by the side of his, gently touching Emmeline's arm. She jumped and turned her wide eyes on him; they were filled with fear and confusion, and she blinked quickly, panting softly.

"Tyler?" she said softly.

"Yeah, it's me," he said quietly, moving up to perch on the edge of the bed beside her. "It's me, you're okay. It was only a bad dream." He reached up a hand and gently massaged her neck with his thumb, using his other hand to tenderly brush the hair from her face.

"They're getting worse," Emmeline said softly, her voice wan with exhaustion.

"What are?" Tyler asked quietly, still massaging her neck gently.

"My nightmares," Emmeline said. "They just…they just…" Her voice trailed off, but her eyes lost their glassiness as she stared at something by Tyler's desk.

"What's wrong?" Scooting to the end of his bed, she craned her neck at the photographs pinned to Tyler's wall, tilting her head to one side. She reached out and took one photograph in particular.

"This photo was taken at Putnam Lake, wasn't it?" she said, holding out the photograph of the five of them—Pogue, Caleb, Reid, Tyler and herself—at the lake during the summer. "This summer?"

"Yeah. My birthday," Tyler said. His seventeenth birthday; he was the baby of the group, only turning seventeen in the middle of a July, and for his birthday they had gone out to Putnam Lake to have a barbecue and swim.

"Okay, this might sound a little insane, but…" Emmeline sighed and bit her lip. "I think something's going on over there."

Tyler stared at her. "What are you talking about?"

"Well, I can't really explain it, is all," Emmeline said awkwardly, glancing up at him as if she was afraid he'd look at her like she was crazy.

"Well, try me," Tyler said, and Emmeline glanced at him, biting her lip.

"I have these nightmares…" she said quietly.

"Yeah, we've noticed," Tyler nodded.

"You know?" Emmeline said, her eyes widening again.

"Yeah, all of us. They started just before we came back to school, right?" Tyler said, nodding. "Right before your Ascension?"

"Yeah," Emmeline said softly, and her pretty eyes raved over his face. "Okay, well…sometimes…my dreams…they come true."

"Huh?" Tyler said softly, tilting his head to the side.

"Look, Tyler…" Emmeline rubbed her hands over her face tiredly, her expression exhausted. "I dreamt about Chase Collins—for days—before he arrived in Ipswich. I didn't say anything because Caleb liked him, but when I tried to tell anyone, you guys were all too busy trying to impress girls or beat each other at pool or swimming…"

Tyler's cheeks warmed; it was true that they had all had their priorities a bit warped in the last few weeks. Caleb starting to date Sarah; Pogue and Kate fighting all the time, Reid had done his best to screw with Caleb's head, and Tyler, well…he always followed Reid's example.

"People have weird dreams, I'm sure it was just a coincidence," Tyler shrugged. He hadn't particularly liked Chase Collins, even in the beginning; he had just jumped into their group and assumed that he had actually earned their friendship and trust. For them, trust wasn't something they could give out easily, even if they wanted to. Even now, Pogue hadn't told Kate about their big bad secret.

Emmeline still didn't know that Caleb had spilled to Sarah, and Tyler didn't want to be there when Emmeline found out.

"When has anything in our lives ever been a coincidence, Tyler?" Emmeline moaned softly, her head in her hands. "I mean, we're warlocks."

"You're a witch," Tyler pointed out. Emmeline's eyes narrowed.

"We're _warlocks_," she said, and Tyler realised he'd annoyed her by differentiating her from them just because of her gender. She was a little bit of a feminist. "And there are records of our ancestors having the power to see into the future and communicate with ghosts and other supernatural beings… I dreamt about Kate being attacked, I dreamt about the dress Sarah wore to the dance right down to the colour of the ribbon she wore around her neck, I dreamt about the fight at Putnam Barn and it burning down and I didn't do anything about it because I didn't believe any of it." Emmeline said, her voice getting stronger and more upset the longer she spoke. She took a deep breath, rubbing her face with her hands.

"I've been dreaming about this little girl in a white cap and this woman screaming till her throat bleeds, and last night, I dreamed about this tree, and I couldn't remember where I'd seen it before, and it bothered me all morning, until I saw this picture," Emmeline said, dragging her bag onto the bed and rooting around for a notepad covered in sketches of a very distinctive tree.

"That's the tire-swing tree," Tyler said, recognising it instantly. The gnarled, burned tree was a shell of its former self, but some of it had continued to grow while other parts had carbonised; their grandfathers had hung a rope from one of the strongest branches, and while they had had to replace the tyre and sometimes the rope, the branch was going strong, and every summer, they spent hours in Putnam Lake swimming, and usually camped on the lakeside.

"Exactly—and I keep seeing it in my dreams. There's always a little girl in a white bonnet standing by it, soaking wet and terrified," Emmeline said. "And in one of my dreams, she said something to me, she said 'Ruth,' and 'Hannah'. That was it."

"Ruth and Hannah?" Tyler frowned. "What does that mean?"

"I don't know—but they're both names of the women in John Putnam's family," Emmeline said. "Mr Hoffman made me realise it when he wrote down the names of the original settlers' families. Hannah was John Putnam's wife; Ruth was the name of their little girl."

"So…what about them?" Tyler asked, failing to see what any of this meant.

"Well, I think that… I don't know. All I know is that I have these dreams, and they're…they're _twisted_. I see the woman, Hannah, and I see the little girl, and sometimes a baby boy, and they're all soaking wet, as if they'd been swimming in the lake, but I always feel…I always feel terrified when I see them, like I know something awful happened to them, I just don't know what, but whatever it is… I think that whatever these dreams mean, they have something to do with Dad."

"Your father? Emmeline—he's been gone for—"

"Nine years, I know," Emmeline said heavily, her face falling again, "but I see him in my nightmares sometimes, always the same, always bloody, and screaming in terror. And I wanna know why."

"So—you think you've got the Shining or something?" Tyler asked, frowning; Reid read a lot of Stephen King, and Tyler usually read the books Reid left littered on the floor.

"Tyler!" Emmeline moaned tiredly.

"No, I'm being serious. You've been seeing the future?" Tyler said.

"Well, yes. I mean, it only happens when I'm asleep, and not every night—some times it's worse than others, but…it's not like I've got Casper the Friendly Ghost locked in my closet," Emmeline said, sounding upset. Tyler glanced at her, taking time to let his eyes linger over her features, her pretty little nose, her short, thick eyelashes… She sounded so unsure and volatile; she hadn't told anybody else about her suspicions, that she had some kind of ESP going on.

"So it's more like a twinkling than shining," Tyler said, nodding understandingly. She couldn't communicate with ghosts or levitate shit, but she was having dreams that told her what the future held…

"Tyler!" Emmeline moaned again, her head in her hands.

"I'm sorry!" Tyler said quickly, earnestly. "I'm sorry—okay, so you have these dreams. What makes you think they have anything to do with the Putnam family, and your dad?"

"I just…I just have this weird vibe, that whatever happened to Dad all those years ago—it had something to do with these dreams I've been having," Emmeline said. "And I think these women—Hannah Putnam and Ruth…that they're at the heart of it."

"Hannah Putnam lived hundreds of years ago, Emmeline," Tyler said gently. "How could she have any effect on what goes on nowadays? The cops concluded that your dad was washed into the river."

"That's what the cops said, yeah, I know," Emmeline said heavily, and her shoulders slumped. Tyler leaned in and kissed her shoulder gently. He rarely heard Emmeline talk about her father, but he remembered everyone gathering at the Danvers mansion while the police and their fathers searched the area for Uncle William. For days, they had been out searching every part of Ipswich, and all surrounding areas; they had dredged the lake and searched the river and the woods, but they'd come up with nothing.

"So what do _you_ think?" Tyler asked quietly.

"I don't know what to think," Emmeline said. "But in my dreams…I always see him, and I see the woman in the background, and my father's terrified…"

"I haven't heard you talk about your dad in a long time," Tyler said quietly. William Danvers III had disappeared on old Putnam Lane just after Caleb and Emmeline had turned nine; he could still remember it, because that year, they hadn't done the traditional haunted-houses, hide-and-seek in the dark, watching _Hocus_ _Pocus_, making candy-apples and trick-or-treating and going to the annual Halloween fair at the schools and carving pumpkins.

They had all been searching for Uncle William, or waiting for any news about the search. They had dressed up and gone trick-or-treating, but every Halloween since, it had been different. Not for Reid, or Tyler or Pogue; only for Emmeline. She had never celebrated Halloween the way she used to. The Danvers were the best Satanists in their circle of friends; every year they had turned their house into a haunted-house; they had each tried to outdo each other with Halloween pranks and costumes. Since her father's disappearance, Emmeline's passion for All Hallows Eve had turned lacklustre.

"Yeah, I know," Emmeline said softly, her voice hoarse. She inhaled subtly, and turned to lean her head against his. "You know…if it wasn't for pictures… I wouldn't even remember what he looks like."

Tyler only remembered a booming, dog-like laugh and twinkly molasses eyes filled with laughter and mischief. He remembered Uncle William using the ketchup bottle to suck excess ketchup back inside when he'd squirted too much on Tyler's smiley-face potatoes, and standing on the bar-stools in the kitchen, wrapped in aprons, while they dipped candy-apples, getting caramel all over their faces and fingers.

"I miss his laugh," Tyler admitted. His dad, he knew, missed Uncle William; all the dads did. Tyler's dad, and Reid's and Pogue's and the twins' had grown up together as brothers, just as they had. In some respects, they were all closer than brothers because they weren't related, didn't have to live with each other—though Tyler believed he could live with Reid forever, like Turk and JD—and appreciated each other much more than normal friends did because they were the only ones they could be completely honest and themselves with.

Emmeline was quiet for a little while, then she squirmed slightly against him and sighed. "I miss the way Mom was when he was with us."

Tyler closed his eyes and rubbed her back comfortingly. It had taken its toll worse on Aunt Evelyn than anyone else when Uncle William had disappeared; they had been together since they were almost seventeen, Tyler knew. They had been high-school sweethearts and spent all their college years together, getting married right after graduation. Aunt Evelyn had been apart from Uncle William for maybe a month in the entire time she had started dating him, when he disappeared. For a few years, she had been okay; when the twins had gotten their powers—Emmeline later than Caleb—she had started drinking, remembering her husband and the awesome power he possessed and everything he had done for her using magic.

"She's trying, though," Tyler said quietly. "She's trying to go back to that person."

"You can't ever go back," Emmeline said softly.

"Well, then, she's working to move on, be a better person than she's been," Tyler said, undeterred.

"I suppose," Emmeline acquiesced miserably. Between Emmeline and Caleb, Emmeline took their mother's alcoholism the worst; she got very upset about it, sometimes cried because of her frustration over her mother drinking herself into oblivion almost every night, all the accidents that could have killed her because she was drunk, like when Emmeline had found her mother passed out in the bathtub.

"She went to rehab because she wants to be there for all the things your dad can't be there for," Tyler said quietly.

"Like what?" Emmeline said dully.

"I don't know—like, watching you graduate from college, holding her first grandchild," Tyler shrugged, and Emmeline let out a tiny little miserable scoff. He frowned bemusedly.

"Having babies requires something I don't have," she said quietly, and Tyler knew Emmeline well enough to know she sounded sad.

"What's that?"

"A man."

"Not in this day and age," Tyler shrugged. "You could get turkey-basted."

"Ew! I'm not going to get my babies from a sperm-bank," Emmeline exclaimed, wrinkling her nose.

"You know what we should do?" Tyler said, grinning. Emmeline's eyes widened questioningly. "We should make a pact. If you're not married by the time you're twenty-five, we should have a baby together."

The mood she had been in all day, being exhausted and morbid, Emmeline's laughter made Tyler's insides writhe in ecstasy. _He_ had made her eyes sparkle like that, made her throw back her head and _cackle_ with laughter like the little witchling she was.

"What?" Tyler said, his cheeks flushing even as he grinned in amusement. "What's so funny? You told me at Reid's house-party that you wanted to have at least three kids by the time you're thirty." Her eyes sparkling, Emmeline's smile was brilliant, her cheeks glowing, and she looked at him like he was…like he was worthy of her.

"You'd want to give me babies?" she smiled.

"Why not?" Tyler said shyly. "I've known you since I was born. One of the first pictures of me has you in it."

"That's true," Emmeline smiled shyly. "We probably know more about each other than is entirely wise." Tyler chuckled; around Emmeline, they tended to forget that she was a _girl_ and that they probably shouldn't fart and belch and adjust themselves in front of her, talk about what they'd like to do to the girls in their class…

"So what do you say?" Tyler said, smiling. "We'll be each other's back-ups?" Emmeline's smile was gentle and sweet and shy, just like her.

"I'd like that," she said quietly, trying not to smile too widely. Tyler grinned, and in a brief moment of confidence, leaned forward and brushed his lips against hers, no more than he would have in greeting when he hadn't seen her in a while, but…something changed.

Something had been changing for months. And for a split second, he thought Emmeline suspected it. Her eyes were wide and dark, thoughtful. Tyler realised they were both holding their breath and softly exhaled. Licking his lips, he glanced away.

"Uh, Reid wanted to go to Nicky's for dinner," he said. "If you wanna come with us…?"

* * *

**A.N.**: Please review!


	5. Time's Apprentice Memory

**A.N.**: Please review!

* * *

**The Twinkling**

Chapter Five

_Time's Apprentice: Memory_

* * *

Tuesday was pretty standard; thanks to the long nap Tyler had endorsed yesterday in his dormitory, and enough good food at Nicky's to send her off to sleep early later that night, Emmeline slept well on Monday night; her dreams were average, normal; she saw the little girl only once, smiling through her tears.

In her dream-diary, she noted that perhaps her dreams had calmed because she now had an idea of where she was supposed to be looking; Ruth Putnam. Whatever her dreams were about, whatever had happened to her father, she knew instinctively that it all came down to the black-eyed woman in her dreams who terrified Ruth so badly.

Unusually for her, Emmeline drove herself to school without waiting for Caleb; she wanted to check something first, something that had appeared in her dreams, and knew Caleb would ask too many questions she wasn't ready to answer just yet if she asked him to drive over to the Putnam house.

When John Putnam had been tried and hung for witchcraft, the four families in the coven had purchased a quarter each of John Putnam's land. The house and the barn were ignored and neglected, but there was one part of the estate that had been observed by the families; the Putnam family plot. Emmeline could remember walking through the woods and coming across a pretty little meadow in the heart of which stood a little walled cemetery, bearing maybe a half-dozen tombstones.

She parked up in front of the Putnam house. Like the Danvers' first colony house, it was a plain, small little structure with low ceilings, tiny windows, and a huge hearth; trees and plants had grown wild within the confines of the walled garden-plot, where once it had been recorded that John Putnam and his wife kept vegetables, herbs and flower-beds. The house was eerie, the windows like empty dark eyes devoid of emotion or compassion; they seemed to watch her as she tugged her blazer close around her and walked past the house, through a small thicket, and into the little meadow she remembered from her ramblings with the boys.

John Putnam hadn't been buried with his family; he had been given an unmarked grave outside the colony limits; but inside the little burial plot were several tombstones; they were each decorated with a winged skull, of all things, and the names of the Putnam children who had died in infancy during the harshness of Massachusetts' winters or childbirth. Some of the children had been born in successive years and buried around the same time as each other; there were three graves Emmeline was interested in.

_The wife of John Putnam_,

Hannah

4 May, 1660 - 30 October, 1692

_An Angel Fell_

Ruth Ann Putnam

13 December, 1686 - 30 October, 1692

Nathaniel Putnam

3 June, 1689 - 30 October, 1692

These were the people from her dreams, she knew instinctively. Hannah, Ruth and Nathaniel Putnam—John Putnam's family, his wife and only surviving children. And they had all died on the same day. How, well—Emmeline was going to find that out, because however it had happened, it had something to do with her dreams, and her father. She noted down the names and the dates on the gravestones and frowned, used her magic and conjured some flowers out of nothingness, letting them drift down onto the graves.

It seemed like the thing to do. She never went to see her grandmother's tombstone without taking flowers. She watched the flowers drift to the grassy mounds and the lopsided stone markers and walked back to her car.

Emmeline didn't have lessons until after break; she wanted to go to the library. Spenser's library was unusually well-endowed for a school, even a private school that was hundreds of years old. Some of the most unique books in the area could be found in the library at Spenser, and it was there that Emmeline headed for the moment it opened.

She tugged down all the books in the Local History section—_Rise_ _of_ _the_ _Wiccans_ and _The Putnam Trials_ were among the books; she brought out a stack of Post-It notes and a highlighter and she spent two hours going through every book on local history and the original settlers' families, photocopying passages and highlighting things, and making astounding discoveries.

She was reading up on the fate of Hannah Putnam and completely shocked with her discoveries, when someone touched her shoulder and made her jump; clutching her heart, which was pounding like a hammer against anvil on her ribs, she whirled around in her seat, almost falling off, and blinked quickly, catching her breath, when Tyler smirked down at her.

"Didn't think you were skittish," he remarked softly, keeping his rich voice low so the librarian didn't kick him out.

"Ha, you would be too if you'd been reading up on how John Putnam got his kicks," Emmeline said, gesturing to the books neatly stacked beside her, the ones she had already read through.

"What're you researching him for?" Tyler asked, sitting down in the chair beside her, after removing a stack of highlighted photocopies. Glancing around and seeing the library was deserted but for them and the librarian at the other end of the hall behind her desk, he lowered his voice nevertheless. "Are you looking for a way to find Chase?"

"Um, no," Emmeline said. "Though it's not a bad idea. Maybe we should go through the Goodwin Pope family-tree and see who else might have the power. I mean, for three hundred years that bloodline's gone unfettered…"

"And there might be more Chases after us," Tyler said quietly, a hint of anxiety touching his brilliant sapphire eyes.

In Emmeline's opinion, Chase's priorities had been completely out of line; he wanted to get revenge on _them_, on Caleb, Pogue, Reid, Tyler and her? For what—for his ancestor being excommunicated from the Ipswich colony for basically torturing and terrifying the other settlers? The only reason Chase Collins was alive was because John Putnam had raped a woman in her sleep as an incubus. Had Agnes Goodwin Pope not conceived, John Putnam's power would have ended with him; his wife and his two surviving children had predeceased him. Chase Collins wanted to get revenge on them personally for what happened to him, and to his dad—he should have blamed the bastard John Putnam for being selfish and evil.

"So what are you researching?" Tyler asked, eyeing the books spread out on the table before Emmeline.

"Well, you remember what I told you yesterday, about the names, Hannah and Ruth?" Emmeline said.

"Yeah, what of them?"

"Well, I went to the Putnam cemetery this morning and found gravestones with those names on them. Hannah, Ruth and Nathaniel Putnam all died on the thirtieth of October, 1692," Emmeline said.

"How's that?" Tyler frowned.

"Well, according to these books, it appears that Hannah Putnam found out that her husband had been having affairs with a lot of the women in Ipswich and Rowley, and she packed up her children and was driving toward a friend's house in the colony, when she lost control of the horses and the three of them—Hannah, Ruth and Nathaniel—were pitched into Putnam Lake," Emmeline said sadly. "All three of them drowned. That's what the books say, anyway."

"What do _you_ think?" Tyler asked quietly, glancing at her. Emmeline sighed and drew her dream-diary out of her bag, flipping to a picture she had drawn of Hannah Putnam.

"I don't know, really, but every time I see Hannah Putnam in my dreams…she's _sinister_, I don't know," Emmeline shrugged. It was difficult to describe what she felt in her dreams; the Hannah Putnam she saw in her dreams was stricken with madness, screaming until her throat bled, she _frightened_ Emmeline—and like Tyler had said, she wasn't that skittish. "There's something _wrong_ with her, and the little girl I see, Ruth, she's always terrified."

"Maybe the colonists couldn't explain what happened," Tyler shrugged. "It wouldn't be the first time they've tried to come up with explanations for supernatural stuff that happens—especially around our families."

"Yeah, I suppose," Emmeline frowned. "I just…get the feeling that I'm missing something, something important."

"Like what?"

"I don't know," Emmeline sighed. "But I'm going to keep looking."

"Why don't you try on the internet?" Tyler asked. "Or missing persons files—you could find out what the police said about your dad."

"Yeah, maybe," Emmeline said, brightening up. "I might have to…" She bit her lip. She wasn't an expert at computers; she couldn't even work Skype, but Reid… He knew how to hack into the Ipswich Police files, and delete any record of his misdeeds.

"You should get Reid to help you hack into the Ipswich Police files," Tyler said, and Emmeline beamed at him.

"I was just thinking that," she said, and Tyler smiled. "Hey—what're you even doing here? This is the library!" Tyler grinned, chuckling softly.

"I saw you walking over when I got a glass of water earlier and, you know, I fell asleep," Tyler shrugged. "I thought I'd come find you. It's almost break—you wanna go get cinnamon rolls? I'll con extra icing off Marjory for you." Emmeline giggled and smiled.

"Alright, I _am_ done here," she said, groaning as she eyed the books. "I'm gonna have Times New Roman typeface in front of my eyes for the rest of the day." Tyler chuckled.

"I'll help you put these all back," he said, gathering an armful of books while Emmeline put her research into her bag, and kept the books she wanted to check out.

"I wish _The_ _Ipswich_ _Settlers_ hadn't been checked out," Emmeline grated, as she helped Tyler put all the books back in the right place. "I'm sure there's a bunch of information on the Putnam family in there. They'd have recorded everything about Hannah Putnam's death, especially if they thought John had something to do with it."

"Maybe Sarah checked it out," Tyler suggested.

"Why would she have checked it out?" Emmeline frowned, turning to Tyler, whose cheeks flushed gently.

"I don't know—Kate said she's been reading up on your family history," Tyler said, shrugging, poking her gently in the shoulder.

"Why would she be doing that?" Emmeline asked, her heart skipping a beat in apprehension; why was Caleb's new girlfriend researching the Danvers family? She didn't _believe_ anything she read about them, did she? Emmeline had to wonder…

"I don't know—but how many people can say they're on the ins with a family who _founded_ this country?" Tyler said, smiling. Emmeline nodded in agreement; there had to be some level of glamour in dating an heir of Ipswich.

"She's not on in the ins with the Danvers family, though," she reminded Tyler. "She's only on the ins with Caleb because he likes her pretty hair." Tyler chuckled softly, but he glanced at her and his eyes darkened thoughtfully.

"How come you don't like her? Kate, I understand—you think Pogue deserves better, but Sarah's nice," Tyler said quietly.

"I don't not like her," Emmeline said softly. "I just…don't _know_ her."

"So why did you hide in your room at the party instead of hanging out with her and getting to know her?" Tyler asked, and Emmeline turned to stare at him incredulously. Shy Baby Boy was reprimanding _her_ for being standoffish?

"Hey, when you become a social butterfly, _then_ you can have a go at me," she said lightly, but Tyler shrugged, taking the warning.

"I was just saying…she's nice," Tyler mumbled. "She's not like Kate." Emmeline shrugged and pushed several books onto their appropriate shelves. "She likes art; you could talk about that…"

"Maybe _you_ should date her," Emmeline said, smirking at him.

"She's not my type," Tyler said, his back to her as he put several books up on the top shelf for her.

"Oh, and who is?" Emmeline smiled. She had never seen Tyler within five feet of another girl besides herself or the others' girlfriends before; though he liked to look, he was too shy to go up and talk to any girl who made him take notice.

Tyler didn't answer, but his cheeks glowed as he reached behind him for another book and placed the last one on the shelf. Emmeline wondered _why_ he didn't answer; they met Reid in the dining hall, gorging on Cap'n Crunch and chocolate-milk; as he had promised, when they went to get cinnamon rolls, Tyler conned Marjory, one of the cooks who had a sweet spot for Tyler's pretty eyes, out of several sachets of icing.

The cinnamon rolls were gooey, chewy and moist, just the way Emmeline liked them. Since kindergarten, Spenser cinnamon-rolls had been her favourite treat. She and Tyler always had extra icing on theirs and got sugar-high for the rest of the day, which made them much more open than usual, giggly and flirty to a fault, and had the same effect on them as an alcopop. Seeing them all hyper put Reid in a good mood, and he was coerced into hacking into the police files for Emmeline.

"You know, you could just go to the police station and ask for the files," Reid said, and Tyler and Emmeline both scoffed at him; he grinned, "yeah, but my way is _so_ much more fun."

"Hey," someone said, and Emmeline glanced up; Caleb, accompanied by Sarah, dropped into chairs at their table.

"Hi," Emmeline said warily; Reid turned to his Cap'n Crunch, anxious that Caleb the killjoy might have overheard them plotting to hack into the Police Station files.

"What're you guys talking about?" Sarah asked, and they all clammed up. Tyler and Emmeline scooted closer to one another for security, taking large bites of their cinnamon-rolls so they didn't have to answer.

"Emmeline was just boring me with her plans for our next History assignment," Reid said, around a mouthful of Cap'n Crunch. "Girl really needs to get herself some hobbies and go shopping like a _normal_ teenage girl."

"I have hobbies!" Emmeline frowned. "Better than yours."

"You don't know what my hobbies are," Reid countered.

"Yes I do. Sleeping, masturbating, X-Box, swimming and shooting pool," Emmeline said, and Sarah laughed. "In that order." Tyler chuckled and sipped his drink, and Caleb rolled his eyes, trying not to show how amused he was.

"So, what are you going to write your essay on, Emmeline?" Sarah asked, and Emmeline swallowed a mouthful of cinnamon-roll.

"I haven't decided yet," she said noncommittally. "Something about the original settlers."

"I thought you told Grandpa you weren't going to write about our family," Caleb frowned.

"I never said I was going to," Emmeline countered.

"Then who _are_ you gonna write about?" Caleb asked.

"I told you, I don't know yet," Emmeline said, though the idea of a research project was formulating in her head. Whatever she ended up figuring out with her dreams, she might be able to use for her History essay—if she had any luck at all.

"Hey, Sarah, did you check _The Ipswich Settlers_ out of the library?" Tyler asked, and Emmeline glanced at him.

"Uh, yeah, I did. I'm halfway through reading it," Sarah said. "Why?"

"Oh, Emmeline was just looking for it earlier today," Tyler shrugged. "Kate mentioned you were reading up on our family history."

"Oh, yeah," Sarah smiled. "Some real interesting stuff." Tyler let out an uncomfortable laugh and glanced at Emmeline.

The bell rang, and they finished up their food and headed off to their lectures; Emmeline made a mental checklist of what she had to do after swimming-practice that afternoon, and spent most of her day catching up on what she had missed the previous day. She had her teachers email her their lecture notes from yesterday so she could catch up, hers being nonexistent while they actually believed they were just poor-quality; Tyler had created an illusion-Emmeline, a sort of mystical doppelganger who looked and acted like Emmeline but who was completely intangible, a figment of people's perception of reality. They were the best and easiest way of getting out of something while still seeming to do it, like classes, detentions and their parents' insipid white-collar soirées. It was usually Emmeline who had to create the illusions; Reid and Tyler were the worst at wanting to get out of things or just plain not showing up for them.

It was unusually thoughtful for Tyler to have remembered an illusion-Emmeline while she was napping in his dormitory. She met up with Reid and Tyler during their math lecture in the big amphitheatre cinema, sitting next to each other; Reid dozed across his notebook and Tyler kept glancing at her notes when the slides changed before he could write everything down. They were set another long assignment after handing in their homework and they had to wait for Reid to be reprimanded by Ms Hemingway for not doing his homework.

They all had a double-period English Literature seminar after math, and after that, Emmeline went to the girls' locker room and changed into her streamlined black, high-legged Speedo swimsuit, and walked out to the pool with two little hair-bands on her wrist, separating her hair into two little braids.

"Aw, look at you," Tyler smiled, reaching out to flick the completed braid playfully. "You look like you've regressed back to the second grade." Emmeline slapped his hand away playfully and smiled as she bound her second braid with a band and pinned them both together, her swimming-hat tucked into the leg of her swimsuit for safekeeping.

"Some of us never _left_ second-grade," she retorted, and Tyler laughed.

"Hey, don't talk about Reid like that; he's not here to defend himself," he said, and Emmeline laughed. "So, are you feeling okay today? You're not gonna pass out in the pool? I won't have to do a Baywatch, will I?"

"Well, I don't know about _that_," Emmeline grinned, eyeing him up and down as if she really was eyeing him up as a delicious scrap. She fought not to lower her eyes again to those pretty abs of his. Tyler laughed and shook his head, grinning, and poked her playfully at her waist; retaliating, Tyler almost managed to knock Emmeline into the pool while they tickled each other and tried to avoid being tickled. Giggling madly, Emmeline was captured by Tyler, but instead of dumping her in the pool as he'd threatened, he just squeezed her tight and released her, linking an arm around her shoulders, chuckling. The boys arrived, Pogue in his absurdly small shorts, Reid sauntering past a cluster of girls whose eyes all travelled from six-pack to six-pack.

"What're you two girls cackling about?" Reid asked, sauntering over and leaning against the pool-cover. Emmeline and Tyler both shrugged, grinning. It was a good practice, mostly because Emmeline was in a better mood than she had been for most of the week.

The only thing that ruined her mood when they were excused for the night and told to hit the showers, was Caleb announcing that he had invited Sarah over to their house for dinner.

"What're you cooking?" Caleb asked, and Emmeline just stood there, stunned and incredulous. What was she _cooking_? Did she _look_ like a personal, hired chef?

"Uh, nothing," she said, blinking, slightly dazed. Caleb frowned.

"What d'you mean?"

"I mean—Grandpa and I are going _out_ for dinner tonight," Emmeline said—completely true; Grandpa always took her out for dinner on Wednesdays, after she had gone to the hospital to give some of the kids a music lesson. She was head of the Community Outreach Programme, and did a lot of charity work, but she enjoyed teaching the children in the paediatric ward how to play the piano. They had so little else to look forward to, when she saw their smiles and received thank-you cards from children who got well enough to leave the hospital, it made her feel like she had done something really _good_ and worthwhile with her Wednesday afternoons.

"What do you mean, you're going out?" Caleb frowned.

"It's Wednesday," Tyler spoke up, and then flushed when the twins turned to stare at him. He shrugged. "Even I know Grandpa Robin takes Emmy out every Wednesday."

"It's our catch-up night, you know that," Emmeline frowned. She and her grandfather always had a midweek dinner to catch up with the events of the first half of the week; Sundays were also devoted to the same, but usually involved bonding over a movie and takeout.

"Oh yeah, the club," Caleb nodded, remembering. "Well, can you make something for me and Sarah to eat later?"

"Er, _no_," Emmeline said, not believing what she was hearing. Was she part of a catering maid-service or something? Did she have to start wearing a little French maid's costume and strut around the house with a little feather-duster and a silver tray laden with His Highness' favourite foods?

"Why not?"

"Because I'm working at the hospital today, Caleb," Emmeline frowned. "I _always_ work at the hospitals on Wednesdays. Where's your head today, jeez?"

* * *

Emmeline's grandfather always took her to the Ipswich Colony Club on Wednesday evenings, for a fancy meal and some quiet time during which they talked about everything and anything, had a very fine meal, and just bonded. It was also a chance for Grandpa Robin to show off his only granddaughter. Caleb and the boys wouldn't normally be caught dead at the Club, but Emmeline, she loved the food, and the people weren't all bad; most were friends with her mother and could remember how great her dad was, and she worked with some of them as a junior member of the Charity League.

So when Emmeline returned from the hospital after an hour-long visit, during which she had given a few kids a piano lesson using a donated keyboard and gone to the NICU to give the nurses the preemie hats she had knitted and read a story to the young kids, she jumped into the shower and got ready for dinner with her grandpa at the club.

She put on a very pretty patterned monochrome _Jason Wu_ skirt, and a maroon embellished knit-top by _Alberta Ferretti_, a pair of nude _Louboutin_ heels, and pushed a pair of large diamond studs through her ears after putting her hair up into a bun with locks of her hair twisted prettily into it. She examined her reflection and applied a little bit of makeup; she kept it subtle, underrated, and elegant, with a very sheer, berry-coloured lip-stain, picked out a very lovely purse and transferred her phone and wallet into it, grabbed a jacket and dropped downstairs into the foyer, beaming at her grandfather.

"There she is; my beautiful granddaughter!" Grandpa beamed, embracing her in a hug and trying to rumple her hair.

"Hey!" Emmeline exclaimed, swatting his hand away. "You know me and my hair don't get along!"

"Well, it looks very pretty," he chuckled. "Are you guys ready?" he called, and Emmeline whirled around as echoing shouts greeted her grandfather's voice. Caleb and Sarah left the drawing-room, hand in hand. Caleb was in a casual suit, Sarah, one of her messy bohemian-style dresses.

Emmeline turned a very dangerous look on her grandfather, who caught her eye and gave her a look in response. He didn't want his Wednesday night dinner with her ruined by two hangers-on any more than she did, but he was well-bred enough, like her, not to make a deal of it—at least until Sarah had returned to her dormitory at Spenser.

They piled into Grandpa Robin's Aston Martin and he drove them all—in silence; the only sound was the radio, softly playing Elvis in the background—to the Ipswich Colony Club, the most exclusive country-club in the area, and founded by the Danvers, Simms, Garwin and Parry families. The club overlooked the harbour, glittering with twinkling little lights in the darkness of the evening; the parking-lot was filled with cars of similar repute to Grandpa's Aston Martin, all meticulously kept, and the grand foyer was flecked with the glittering people of Ipswich.

"Ah, Mr Danvers—your usual table?" the maître d' asked, smiling politely at Emmeline, one of the few well-mannered teenagers who ate regularly at the Club and _didn't_ keep her cell-phone on the table by her plate in case of texts.

"No, a table for _four_ this evening, please," Grandpa said, sliding his eyes over Caleb and Sarah, who looked suitably nervous.

"Very good," the maître d' smiled. "Please follow me." Emmeline glanced longingly at her and Grandpa's usual table—which had the best view in the restaurant—and the maître d' guided them to a suitably fine second-choice table for four. Grandpa pulled the chair out for Emmeline, who tucked her skirt beneath her and sat, smiling at her grandfather; Caleb, she noticed, mimicked Grandpa's actions, and the maître d' handed out menus, none of which (except Grandpa's) had prices. It was that kind of a restaurant, where prices were told upon request and no one who ever dined there was ever bothered about how much they were paying.

She saw Sarah biting her lip at the menu, uncertainty cloaking her eyes, but since she sat across the table from her, Emmeline couldn't lean in and suggest anything. She didn't like Caleb and Sarah being here, but she wasn't going to ruin everyone's night by throwing a tantrum. _Reid_ had always thrown the tantrums when they were little; she had always given the receiver of his blunt tongue a hug and brushed away tears.

The maître d' took drinks orders and Grandpa ordered a bottle of house red to be allowed to breathe before dinner—and retreated, giving them time to decide what they wanted to eat.

"So, Sarah, I understand you're from _Boston_?" Grandpa said. Like Emmeline, he wouldn't show his disappointment that his dinner with Emmeline was being spoilt by their presence.

"Uh, yes," Sarah blushed slightly.

"How is it you came to Spenser?" Grandpa asked.

"I was given a full-scholarship," Sarah said proudly. "I want to go to Harvard, and Spenser is the best way to get there."

"Do you know what you want to study?"

"Mathematics," Sarah said with finality. That surprised Emmeline; she would have thought Sarah an English Literature buff or someone who just knew what school they wanted to go to, not what they wanted to study.

A waiter arrived with four stirred gin Martinis—"The way they _should_ be," Grandpa said, chinking glasses delicately with them before taking a sip of his and sighing at the refreshing taste. Sarah didn't look like she liked the drink, and Grandpa probably noticed, because he very nonchalantly filled the water-glasses. They talked a little while about Sarah, where she had come from, what her parents did, the name of her dog and how many siblings she had, then turned to Caleb.

When it was Emmeline's turn, their waiter arrived to take their dinner orders.

"Filet steak with garlic-sautéed Brussels sprouts and mashed potatoes with truffle-oil, please," Emmeline said, handing her menu to the waiter without even having to look at it. She had known since she woke up this morning exactly what she wanted for dinner tonight.

"A woman who knows what she wants, I love it!" Grandpa declared, and Caleb chuckled as Sarah placed her order uncertainly.

"Don't worry, the venison's delicious," Emmeline said quietly to her. The slow-braised venison in a Madeira sauce with wild-mushrooms and buttery runner-beans was probably her second-favourite meal—even if Grandpa did spend the whole meal singing '_Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer_' under his breath and calling her 'Bambi-murderer' if she ordered it.

The waiter took Caleb's and Grandpa's orders—sea-bass for Grandpa, with spinach-rice and a baked sweet-potato side, and a steak with parmesan-truffle fries and roasted carrots for Caleb—and departed, while a second waiter refilled the drinks, this time bringing Caleb and Sarah sodas while they brought Emmeline a sweet raspberry Cosmopolitan, which she let Sarah try and which she liked far more than the gin Martini the waiter had covertly whisked away, barely touched.

It wasn't like her usual dinners with Grandpa—when it was just them, they bitched and moaned about their lives and gossiped about people—girls at Spenser and the boys, the men in Grandpa's poker group and the women and their botched Botox and eyelifts, women who dressed for their fifteenth birthday since their fiftieth, whose golf-start had been given away to another member, who liked all things frilly, which cheerleader had been caught doing what with her best-friend's boyfriend, and how the outbreak of mono would affect the performance of the football team in their first game of the season, which junior girl looked positively radiant and had been spotted walking suspiciously close to the Planned Parenthood, who was sleeping with who and who liked this guy or that girl, and whose mother had been caught with the personal trainer, whose brother was gay and whose dad had run off with his secretary to Oahu, whose sister had been spotted on Page 6. Even though she didn't have the hugest number of friends, Emmeline always knew what was going on.

With Sarah and Caleb around, one of their biggest sources of gossip was out of the question, and gossiping with Caleb and Sarah wasn't the same as gossiping with Grandpa. It was uncomfortable and annoying to have to think up witty, clever things to say that were deep and interesting.

It turned out to be a history lesson. Of course, there were few people as well-versed in Ipswich history as Grandpa Robin, but Emmeline and Caleb had grown up hearing their family-history as bedtime stories. When their meals came, Emmeline half rose from her seat, just to get a whiff of the gravy sauce from Sarah's slow-braised venison. Last year she had eaten slow-cooked pig's-cheeks without realising what cut of meat it was, and she had fallen in love; she would definitely have that again if she saw it on the menu. That was the night the families had come to the club together and had a private room; she, Reid and Tyler had asked for the pork without knowing it was pig's-cheeks, and everyone else had practically drooled over their plates for the melt-in-your-mouth, tender pork cuts.

Emmeline's dinner arrived, the waiter served the red wine, and Emmeline tucked into her steak. It was pink and juicy in the middle, just the way she liked it; she loved her parmesan and garlic-roasted Brussels sprouts and truffle-oil mashed potatoes, and Grandpa let her have some of his creamy, cinnamony sweet-potatoes baked with gruyere and honey; she tried some of his sea-bass, and by her expression, Sarah had fallen in love with the venison. Emmeline tried some of Sarah's Madeira-soaked wild mushrooms and some venison, and snuck several of Caleb's parmesan-truffle fries, which were the most mouth-watering fries ever created.

"If I could learn how to cook these, I think I'd be the size of a house," Sarah laughed softly, popping the last bite of a stolen fry into her mouth, smiling at Caleb; Emmeline smiled and cut up a Brussels sprout for Sarah to try with some truffle-mash.

She wouldn't have had to share her food if she had come here just with Grandpa; he'd have ordered extra sides for them to taste, regardless of whether they finished them or not.

"Do you come here often?" Sarah asked, and Emmeline glanced up; she was talking directly to her.

"Every week, with Grandpa," Emmeline said, smiling at her grandfather. "And our families sometimes meet up here for a large party. The boys all have to wear suits." She glanced at Caleb, who hadn't worn a tie this evening; usually, when the families met up for a large meal at the Club, the boys always had to wear a fine suit and tie, be on their best behaviour and act like gentlemen. Usually, they went out and got wasted afterwards, and always scored with the ladies because they were dressed up so handsomely—judging by the notches on Reid's bedpost (yes, he did actually carve marks into his bedpost to keep track of how many girls he'd brought home).

It wasn't a wasted evening, but it wasn't one that Emmeline had fully enjoyed, either. By the end of the meal, though it had been a little awkward to begin with, they were all laughing and teasing, exchanging stories. Emmeline was almost sorry to think that Sarah would have to go back to the dorms—until Caleb informed them Sarah had brought an overnight-bag just in case, and was it okay if she spent the night. In one of the guest bedrooms, Sarah had added quickly, if Grandpa wasn't comfortable with her staying with Caleb.

Emmeline glanced at her grandfather, wondering what the Super-Grandpa would have to say about his grandson potentially getting laid for one of the first half-dozen times. Emmeline wasn't stupid; she knew her brother was no virgin; neither was Pogue, or Reid. Tyler was, and that just gave the boys even more ammunition when teasing him about being 'Baby Boy.'

But Sarah staying the night meant Emmeline couldn't commiserate with Grandpa over their spoiled dinner. It meant Emmeline was already having to step aside and make room… They had only been dating a few weeks…

When she got home, Tyler was online, so she set up an MSN chat, and until one a.m. while Emmeline was also trying to do her homework, they were chatting online. Reid wanted her to go over to their dormitory during lunch the next day so she could dictate what information she wanted to get from the police database.

* * *

**A.N.**: Please review! I think we all know what it's like to have someone crash something you hold as a tradition.


	6. A Dedicated Bibliophile

**A.N.**: Okay, I've never been really great friends with a guy, so I don't know how to go about a guy and a girl best-friends turning into something _more_…Hints?

* * *

**The Twinkling**

Chapter Six

_A Devoted Bibliophile_

* * *

Thursday morning, Emmeline and Caleb met up with the guys at their favourite diner for breakfast; Jim's Country-Style Restaurant served the best pancakes and chocolate-chip milkshakes in a tri-county area.

Emmeline wasn't really speaking to Caleb; she had decided to drive herself to school since Caleb usually left early to take Sarah coffee and donuts from his favourite donut-shop, and she had forgotten their breakfast-date until Tyler had called, asking where she was.

Filled up on a Belgian waffle topped with fresh fruit, whipped cream and cinnamon-butterscotch sauce, a fresh blueberry milkshake and one of Tyler's hash-browns, Emmeline was counting out her cash when Caleb finally exploded.

He hadn't invited Sarah to their covenant-only Thursday-morning breakfast, and Emmeline wondered when he would explode from her giving him the cold-shoulder all morning.

"Okay, would you please tell me what I did wrong?" Caleb asked furiously, glowering at her across the table. Emmeline counted out a generous tip for Tracy, the waitress, and added her cash into the pool.

"You didn't do anything wrong," Emmeline said lightly.

"Bullshit," Caleb swore, still scowling at her. "You've had that same smacked-ass face since Sarah and I—"

"Sarah and me," Emmeline corrected.

"What?"

"It's a common misuse—the correct form is 'Sarah and me'," Emmeline said, and Caleb stared at her, then renewed his scowl.

"Whatever—you've had that same glower since Sarah and me met you and Grandpa in the foyer last night," he said. "I want to know what your deal is."

"My deal?" Emmeline said quietly, gazing evenly at her brother. "My _deal_? You invite a girl, a girl you barely even know, to _my_ Wednesday-night dinner with Grandpa at the club. Since I was twelve years old, that has been mine and Grandpa's tradition, Caleb, you know that!"

"I thought it would be a good way for us all to get to know each other," Caleb said, raising his shoulders and holding his palms out defensively.

"No, you decided you could just invite yourselves along because you can't cook, and _I _wouldn't follow your orders and make you something before I went out," Emmeline said, only realising just then how hurt and angry she was about Caleb's assumption that she'd have dinner on the table ready for his date.

"Emmeline, that's not how it was—"

"After swimming, you asked me what I was cooking us for dinner, and when you figured out I was going out, you asked me to cook you and Sarah something, as if I was a housekeeper!" Emmeline said; the other boys, she noticed, were keeping out of the argument; very wise of them.

"You're being ridiculous!" Caleb accused her.

"I am not. I know I like taking care of people, but there are limits, and just because Mom's in rehab now doesn't mean I'm going to start running around after your every whim, or your girlfriend's," Emmeline said fiercely. "So next time, don't ruin mine and Grandpa's night—take Sarah out somewhere that doesn't have a five-figure membership cost, and learn to cook a goddamn meal by yourself!"

She took the little tray on which their money was pooled, grabbed her bag and took the money up to the head waitress, paid and stalked out of the restaurant; a well-dressed local businessman (whom Emmeline knew from her sources was supposed to be on a strict cabbage-soup diet, imposed on him by his harridan wife) held the door for her, and Emmeline slipped into her Range Rover.

It wasn't until she reached Spenser that any of the guys caught up with her; she had already checked out a new novel from the library—'_The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks_' by E. Lockhart—and was thirty-two pages into it before someone touched her waist gently, and she turned to find Tyler leaning against the wall behind her, his expression soft and compassionate at the same time.

"You really laid into him," he said quietly. Emmeline sighed and ran a hand over her tired eyes. "I think Reid's been waiting for that for about five years."

Emmeline laughed humourlessly. "I made a pretty poor showing, huh."

"Nah, it was good. You could feel the seething intensity," Tyler said, smiling quirkily. "Was your night really that bad?"

"He just should've said he'd invited her, that's all," Emmeline shrugged. It had been an okay evening, but it had been very awkward with Caleb's girlfriend, a girl they had only met a few weeks ago, especially since it was only supposed to be her and Grandpa.

"How'd you like her?" Tyler asked, of Sarah. "You didn't say much about her while we IM-ed last night."

"She's alright," Emmeline shrugged. "She was about as comfortable being there as I was having her there."

"She's from a Boston public school," Tyler said. "She told me all this money and stuff is really…kinda overwhelming for her."

"Huh. And she rooms with Kate. You'd have thought the snobbery would have rubbed off already," Emmeline said, and Tyler tried and failed to conceal a smile.

"Well, at least you don't hate Sarah more than you hate Kate," Tyler said.

"I don't hate Kate, I just…think Pogue deserves a lot better," Emmeline said. "There's a difference."

"Yeah, there is," Tyler nodded, smiling gently. "You've got his best interests at heart—all of ours, actually."

"Well, I have very few other friends. I wouldn't be a good one to you guys if I didn't watch out for you," Emmeline said, and Tyler threaded an arm around her shoulders and leaned his head gently against hers, smiling.

"So what're we reading today?" he asked.

* * *

After Emmeline's Shakespeare test on Thursday morning, she and Tyler made their way to the boys' dormitory; Reid was already waiting for them, having skipped the class, causing them to create and illusory-Reid and use magic to fill the answers on his test-paper, with his laptop open, playing some kind of computer-game Emmeline knew she would never understand and was kind of glad she didn't.

"How did the test go?" Reid asked, sipping from his mug of tea, grinning cheekily at them.

"I think you and Mr Waugh will be pleased with your B-plus grade," Emmeline said drily, dumping her things on the floor and smoothing her skirt beneath her as she sat down on Tyler's bed.

"Only a B-plus?" Reid pouted.

"We had to make it believable," Tyler said, and Reid idly shot him the finger, and Emmeline giggled softly, pouring herself a cup of tea from the pot on the table between Reid and Tyler's beds, which overflowed with a kettle, teabags, candy wrappers, magazines, and CD cases as coasters.

"So, you came to me for my hacking expertise," Reid said. "What do you wanna know?"

Emmeline glanced up, swallowed a gulp of blisteringly-hot tea and scooted over to Reid's bed.

"Can you find the file on my dad's disappearance?" she asked, and Reid tsked, as if it was nothing. Two minutes later, he pulled up a Missing Persons file, and her chest clenched painfully at the sight of her father's photograph. So like Grandpa Robin, he had Caleb's dark eyes.

"Okay, so, let's see," Reid said, scanning the document. "Alright, his car was found abandoned on Putnam Lane on the thirtieth of October, 2001… There were no signs of foul-play or sabotage; the vehicle was spotless, no fingerprints, no footprints, nothing. Cops thought it was almost too clean… They dredged Putnam Lake and the river, but couldn't find any traces of him."

"Okay, that's good," Emmeline said softly, trying to avoid looking at her dad's picture. "Hey, can you run a search through their database?"

"What do you want to know?" Reid asked, bringing up a little search box.

"Any other disappearances on or near Putnam Lane," Emmeline said. Reid clicked away, and while they waited for the results, Emmeline tried to avoid looking at the dirty posters on the walls, and instead noticed something she had omitted when she had slept here the other day; on the floor by Tyler's bed was a copy of _Wuthering_ _Heights_, the same book he had asked about when she was reading it at Nicky's on Sunday night. Beneath the book, she could just see, through the translucent white of the plastic video-store bag, Tom Hardy's distinctive features. Tyler had taken _Wuthering Heights_ out of the library?

"Oh _wow_," Reid groaned subtly, and Emmeline glanced back at him, shifting in her seat to peer over his shoulder at the laptop screen.

"What?" she asked.

"Last year, Clark Wells disappeared on the thirtieth of October," Reid said, clicking on a file. "They found his car, but he'd vanished. He's still completely MIA."

"Maybe he was kidnapped," Tyler shrugged.

"Well, maybe, but there's another one in '93, in '89, '84, '72…" Reid said.

"Always on the thirtieth of October?"

"Yeah. Like clockwork," Reid said. "There are reports going all the way back to the 1950s, all of them still unsolved."

"Are they _all_ men?" Emmeline asked, when Reid had pulled up the most recent disappearances.

"As far as I can tell," Reid nodded. Emmeline licked her lips thoughtfully, eyeing the Missing Persons documents.

"Can you print those out for me?" she asked.

"Yeah…" Reid said, giving her a strange look. He set up the wireless connection to his printer and soon had a run of Missing Persons documents printed off, almost sixty of them.

"Thank you," Emmeline said, swooping down to kiss Reid high on his cheekbone. She tucked the documents into her backpack.

"What're you gonna do now?" Tyler asked.

"After swimming, I'll go to the city library and see if I can look through any of the old newspapers about any disappearances before 1950," Emmeline said. "The old sheriff's office would have had to deal with them, right?"

"Yeah," Tyler said.

"What're you interested in this stuff for?" Reid asked, eyeing some of the Missing Persons files still open on his laptop.

"Um, well, I'm trying to figure out what happened to my dad," Emmeline shrugged. Reid's eyebrows flickered upwards in surprise. "Don't tell Caleb about it though, please; he'll just go telling Mom."

"Hey, it's your business," Reid shrugged, closing all the files and getting rid of the police database. If anyone could keep secrets from Caleb, it was Reid. Caleb had once said that Tyler didn't have the balls to lie to him; Emmeline knew Tyler just didn't _like_ lying to Caleb. But Reid—he loved aggravating Caleb, seeing how many buttons he could push before Caleb retaliated. Lately, it seemed very few.

As she had said, after her daily swimming practice with the boys, Emmeline showered, dressed and drove over to the city library. A dedicated bibliophile since she had taught herself to read, Emmeline had spent much of her youth scouring the shelves; she knew the library so well it was actually quite nerdy. She went straight to the computers, checking first how far the digitised newspaper reprints went back.

From the 1950s, they went back to the 1870s—anything before that had been kept in leather-bound books available for photocopying. Having the date—the thirtieth of October—helped a lot; she narrowed down the search to disappearances on that date, and came up with over seventy hits, each on the day before Halloween, all men, and none of them were ever seen or heard from again. Emmeline put money on her library card to print off the documents she found, all seventy of them, and added them to the pile she had from after the 1950s that Reid had found for her.

She asked the head librarian to show her to the room of very, _very_ old newspaper printings, and old records of births, deaths, marriages and disappearances that had once been kept in Ipswich's first church, as they would have been kept in the homeland of England. Again going on the October thirtieth date, her search was made a lot quicker, and she came up with over a hundred disappearances on Putnam Lane since 1696, when tenant-servant Miles Turner disappeared while running errands for his master, Isaac Parry; a search was carried out for five days before the colonists gave up; some blamed Natives in the area.

Going through the oldest documents made by the settlers was like…like having someone long-missed waving up from the page, every time she saw one of their families' names. They weren't mere figures from history any longer; they were real people. Emmeline read how they celebrated the wedding of a daughter, the birth of their first child, how they mourned a dead sibling.

At home, she went into the ballroom—a room they _never_ used unless Grandpa wanted to try his experimental artwork (throwing darts at water-balloons filled with paint, or slopping paint over themselves and printing their bodies or dragging themselves over canvas on the floor) or play roller-hockey in the house—and got a pack of Blu-tac and started putting the newspaper articles and Missing Persons ads on the walls in sequential order, starting with Miles Turner.

"Um, lemon-drop, why do you have the faces of a hundred missing people on our walls?" Grandpa asked, and Emmeline glanced over her shoulder as her grandpa strode into the room, his eyebrows raised slightly in surprise.

"History project," Emmeline said, tacking a photograph of Anton Cuervo up on the wall.

"Just what the hell kinda projects are they assigning you at that big fancy private school?" Grandpa asked, peering at the photocopy of the tiny, spindly writing that had documented Miles Turner's disappearance.

"Complicated ones," Emmeline frowned, exhaling heavily, as she tacked Max Dettweiler's file onto the wall.

"You figured out what you're going to write your essay on?" Grandpa asked.

"Yeah—Hannah Putnam," Emmeline said, eyeing the copy of one of the portraits of the Putnam family; John Putnam, black-eyed and beautiful Hannah, little, rosy-cheeked Ruth, and dimpled Nathaniel before reaching over the line of Missing Persons files to tack it on the wall.

"What do these guys have to do with Hannah Putnam?" Grandpa asked, flicking several of the papers with his finger.

"I'm not sure just yet," Emmeline confessed. "But I intend to find out. How was your day?"

"Oh, it was alright. Played a little golf, drank a few Martinis, the usual," Grandpa shrugged. "How about you?"

"I spent most of it at the library," Emmeline said, sighing. "We had a test on Shakespeare in English Literature."

"How'd you do?"

"I think I did good," Emmeline smiled. "Better than Reid, anyway; he didn't even show up for it. Tyler and me had to create an illusion."

"That Reid—he'll always keep you on your toes," Grandpa said kindly, and Emmeline chuckled.

"That's one way of putting it," she said. "No Caleb tonight?"

"He and Sarah have a date."

"They couldn't have gone on it last night?" Emmeline grumbled.

"I know you were disappointed about our Club dinner being spoiled," Grandpa said. Emmeline pouted to herself and pinned more pictures up. "I thought tonight, if you don't have too much homework, we could watch a movie together."

"That sounds cool," Emmeline grinned. "Who gets first choice this time?"

"Me, but you get one veto," Grandpa said, smiling, and Emmeline grinned back.

After Emmeline had finished her homework and done some research on who the first ten of her Missing Persons were, Emmeline brought her DVD cases downstairs to the entertainment-room and found Grandpa snuggling up under a blanket with Absalom curled up beside him on the sofa, snoring gently while Grandpa scratched his ears.

"Alright, lamb-chop, what've you got?" Grandpa asked, peering at the DVD cases. Emmeline had a very extensive DVD collection that only saw viewing privileges in her room; the boys usually stole the huge television in the entertainment-room, but since Caleb was out with Sarah, she and Grandpa had free reign of the house.

They argued good-naturedly about the choice of movie; Emmeline didn't want anything too long, because she was tired and had to get up for an eight a.m. start tomorrow, so Avatar was out; she used her veto on _Saw III_ (one of Reid's movies he had left over here during the last sleepover) and in the end, they settled on _Seven Brides for Seven Brothers_, one of Emmeline's favourite movies.

"You know, I still remember going to see this at the movies when it first came out," Grandpa said, as they snuggled on the sofa with Absalom and a bowl of buttery popcorn. Emmeline wished Tyler was here; he could make two things; poached eggs, and cinnamon-sugar popcorn, and she had a hankering for some.

"You're old," Emmeline remarked idly, and Grandpa dug his fingers into her ribs, making her laugh and squirm away from him. "But I didn't think you were _that_ old."

"I was only eight at the time," Grandpa shrugged. "It was at the old drive-in movie theatre—they tore it down before your daddy was born, which was a shame—but my mother wanted to see it, and my father didn't, so Mother bundled me up in the car, and we went to watch it together."

"How'd she like it?"

"Your great-grandma? She loved it—she thought it was fabulous," Grandpa smiled. "You know, the first VCR I ever bought her was this movie."

"Cool," Emmeline smiled. It was nice to have something to connect her with the family she had never known. She knew her great-grandfather had loved clockwork trains, because the attic, which had been cleaned out and decorated decades ago, still had all of the tracks laid out, and when they were kids, her dad would take her and Caleb up to play with the trains, as Grandpa had with him.

She knew her grandmother, Grandpa Robin's wife, had thought Nessun Dorma the most fabulous piece of music ever created; Emmeline could remember, vaguely, her grandmother sitting at the antique dressing-table in her and Grandpa's bedroom, getting ready for a fancy party, telling Emmeline that a woman should always wear perfume everywhere she'd like to be kissed, and she should wear it every day.

Her grandparents on her mother's side were still around; they visited every Christmas and got along well with Grandpa Robin; Grandma Lily had taught Emmeline how to knit, crochet, and even make lace. Grandpa Richard was a cantankerous old bastard who had only one soft spot; his only granddaughter, and he spoiled Emmeline mercilessly; he sent postcards and presents from wherever he and Grandma Lily were holidaying, always the most exotic, exquisite gifts, and she received long handwritten letters from him and Grandma Lily describing where they were, what they had seen, and they were filled with tiny little watercolour paintings Grandma Lily had done, snapshots of the two of them and the views.

Emmeline watched the movie with her grandpa, singing along to her favourite songs, teasing her grandfather about being a pervy old man when the girls were in their corsets and bloomers; the popcorn had disappeared before the 'flour' part—the part where the brothers cause an avalanche in the pass between the town and the farm, and which Emmeline had thought, when she was four years old, was flour instead of snow.

She let Absalom out when the movie ended and took him upstairs, while Grandpa went to make himself a drink before bed, and climbed into bed.

* * *

Her dreams were, again, very strange. But unlike her other nightmares, she couldn't make sense of any of them. She had nothing to write in her dream diary because she couldn't differentiate one dream from the next or even what she'd seen in them.

Friday morning meant an eight a.m. start, and she was so discombobulated by her dreams that it took her five minutes to realise she was trying to put a hat on as a stocking, and that she had somehow managed to button her shirt on back-to-front. Righting her uniform, she let Absalom out, popped several Eggo waffles into the toaster, and made a cafetiere of coffee for Caleb, only then realising that he was nowhere to be seen or heard; upstairs, she scouted out his bedroom and realised he hadn't slept in his own bed. Leaving the coffee for her grandfather, it took her ten minutes to find her car-keys—Absalom had absconded with them from her purse to his basket—and she was five minutes late to her Italian lesson, after her locker combination failed to cooperate and she realised she hadn't eaten the Eggo waffles she'd put in the toaster.

Altogether, not a good start to the day, but it got better; she and Tyler sat at the back of the amphitheatre during their Classics double-seminar and entertained themselves while watching a horrific version of _Jason_ _and_ _the_ _Argonauts_ with writing a story in tandem, something they did every time they got bored in lessons, and the results in the notebook they always used for it, continuing on every time from the last entry, were hilarious.

At lunch, Emmeline gave the boys a lift to Nicky's, where they had lobster-rolls for lunch and played pool. Emmeline learned how to actually _hit_ the balls with the cue this time, though Tyler had to break for her, and even playing with Tyler against Reid, she still lost. They left for ice-cream from the drive-thru dairy, Emmeline promised Tyler that she would _consider_ going to the Spenser dormitory party later that night, and she dropped the boys off at the dorms before driving back home.

Changing out of her uniform and into comfortable loungewear—a black satin slip-dress and a grey cashmere cardigan—Emmeline set up her laptop in the study and spent several hours researching the men who had disappeared on Putnam Lane, drinking some of her favourite tea from her mother's finest china set, with Absalom curled up in her lap, petting his glossy ears and scratching his nose, compiling profiles on the men in a desperate and futile effort to try and find a link between them.

There was _no_ way to connect them.

"My dear, are you hungry?" Grandpa asked, strolling into the study, and Emmeline glanced up, feeling suddenly ravenous, and Grandpa produced one of his specialties; layered in an English muffin, red onion, fresh lettuce, tomato, bacon and a fried egg.

"Thank you, Grandpa," Emmeline said sweetly, accepting the plate and a glass of orange juice. Grandpa kissed her head and departed, warning her not to stay on the computer for too long, and half an hour later, Emmeline shut down her laptop, rubbing her eyes tiredly.

She did something she hadn't done in a while, (a matter of days), and had a nap; she tugged the cream faux-fur throw at the bottom of her bed over her, drew the curtains with magic, and Absalom snuggled up beside her, snuffling and gently snoring, and slept for an hour or two.

* * *

When she awoke, she went downstairs with Absalom, intent on filling the gap in her stomach, and was tinkering around the kitchen when the doorbell rang; someone, no doubt Grandpa, answered it, and Emmeline continued munching on her strawberry and spinach salad, reading the end of _Wuthering Heights_, and getting very emotional about it.

She finished the book and had to go to the counter for kitchen roll to wipe her eyes; she always cried when she read the book, and saw the 2009 televised production—_always_. Wiping her face, she turned and froze.

Reid and Tyler stood in the kitchen doorway, grinning.

She knew those grins. She knew they had something evil up their sleeves and she knew that was _her_ purse Tyler had grabbed.

"Hi buttercup," Tyler said, smirking gently. Emmeline glanced from one to the other, and then around the kitchen, scouting anything that could potentially waylay the boys from doing whatever it was they were planning.

"You didn't pick up your phone," Reid said.

"—so we thought we'd come get you," Tyler finished, exchanging a wicked smile with Reid.

"Why?" Emmeline asked tremulously, glancing between the boys again, and wondering where her grandfather was.

"We're having a _party_, Emmy," Tyler said, and he and Reid exchanged another of those smiles.

"You go for the arms. I'll get the legs," Reid said in an undertone—and suddenly, Emmeline was squealing and giggling, writhing on the floor, while the boys grabbed hold of her limbs; Reid grabbed hold of her ankles, Tyler hoisted her against his chest with his arms tucked under her shoulders, and they physically absconded her from the house, carrying her through the kitchen, through the house to the foyer—Emmeline tried desperately, laughing, to claw onto something on the walls, a pipe, a piece of furniture, a stair banister—and, not letting her touch the floor even for a second, traded her slippers for a pair of flats, then shimmied with her out to Tyler's Land Rover and chucked her in the back seat, slamming the locked door on her before she could disentangle herself from her cardigan and the pile of crap Tyler accumulated in his back-seat.

"You know, this is kidnapping," Emmeline said, when Tyler had shut his door and turned the key in the ignition.

"I don't think it counts if it's all in the name of a good time," Reid said, slamming his door shut. "Step on it, Baby Boy. I've got some disreputable women to catch up with."

"You could've stayed at the dorms; I didn't drag you out," Tyler said.

"No, you only did that to me," Emmeline grumbled, her cheeks flaming when she realised she would be attending a Spenser party in a black satin slip-dress and a cashmere cardigan. _Not_ the party-wear of her classmates, that was for sure.

"I can't stay at the dorms, to be _early_ to a party without my wingman," Reid said, ignoring Emmeline and staring at Tyler incredulously, while Emmeline tried to run her fingers through her sleep-tousled hair and searched the pockets of Tyler and Reid's many jackets in the back of the car for gum.

"Why do I always have to be the wingman?" Tyler grumbled.

"Well, you're not out chasing much tail, are you," Reid said, and Tyler reached back as he pulled out of the Danvers' wrought-iron gate, handing Emmeline her purse; she dived into it, securing a stick of cinnamon gum, and glared at Tyler as he focused on the road, his classic features lit up by the lights on his dashboard.

"Nine times out of ten you're rejected, Reid, you know that, right?" Tyler said.

"Well, if you'd do your job as wingman, I might have better success," Reid said.

"Or you could try not being a jackass," Emmeline grumbled, and Reid reached back and grabbed her right above the knee, making her shriek and thrash on the backseat, trying to get away. "Why are you dragging me to this party, anyway? I was napping."

"Okay, that, right there—there was something _so_ wrong about that sentence," Reid said. "You were _napping_ on a Friday night?"

"I was on the computer for ages," Emmeline said. "You know I haven't been sleeping great lately."

"Yeah, but that's what classes are for," Reid said. "It's a _Friday_ and you're home with your grandpa—"

"Hey, don't badmouth Robin," Tyler said warningly. "He's cool."

"Thank you, Tyler," Emmeline said, frowning at Reid. "Maybe I don't want to spend my whole Saturday _vomiting_."

"Why not? You didn't _last_ weekend. You spent all night in your room," Reid said accusingly.

"Yeah, taking care of Baby Boy," Emmeline said, gesturing at Tyler.

"For which he was very grateful," Reid said idly. "Emme, you're a senior! This is your last year at Spenser, you have to make your mark!"

"Can't I just wait until college?" Emmeline asked. "Everyone _there's_ a freak."

"I know, I'm looking forward to it," Reid grinned saucily, and Emmeline rolled her eyes.

"Get your mind out of the ditch, please," she said scathingly.

"If it weren't for the gutter, my mind would be hopeless," Reid said proudly, and Emmeline rolled her eyes.

"What the—?" Emmeline frowned and felt something silky and soft in her purse, and couldn't remember keeping anything like that in it; she dragged whatever it was out of her purse and stared open-mouthed at the boys. They had found her teeniest little bikini—a red, polka-dot bandeau bikini by Etsy—from her _underwear drawer_.

"Which of you went through my lingerie chest to find this?" she asked coolly, anger and embarrassment simmering just beneath the surface.

"Baby Boy," Reid said nonchalantly. "He wouldn't let me go anywhere near those teasing little cubby-drawers…" Emmeline turned to glare at Tyler, who kept his eyes resolutely on the road, his cheeks glowing in the lights from the dashboard.

"What? Reid would've given you a thong," he said. "Stop glaring at me, I can feel you burning holes through my skin."

"You couldn't have pulled out my black one-piece?" she complained half-heartedly.

"Dude, it's a _Spenser_ party," Reid said, glancing back at her. "Are you _completely_ clueless about this?"

"Uh—yeah, because I'm not stupid enough to delude myself that alcohol plus a lot of water is a good idea," Emmeline said fiercely. "Why do I even need my bathing-suit for a party?"

"In case it turns into a pool-party," Reid said casually.

"You mean, in case you decide to break into the school pool," Emmeline said drily, shaking her head. "I can't believe Grandpa didn't come save me when I was shouting that I was being kidnapped."

"Are you kidding?" Reid laughed. "He's the one who called us when he saw the missed calls on your cell-phone." _TRAITOR_! Emmeline screeched.

"You could have at least let me change," she said quietly, her cheeks flushing.

"We'll drop you at the girls' dorm when we get to Spenser," Tyler suggested. "I'm sure they'll give you something to borrow."

"If I wanted to look like a slut, I'd watch Serena on _Gossip Girl_ for tips," Emmeline said scathingly, and Tyler and Reid both laughed, making hissing-cat noises and mimicking the slash of claws in midair.

"Hey, you know, Sarah's like in _raptures_ about having dinner at the club with you and your grandpa," Reid said, glancing back at her.

"Oh, really," Emmeline said disinterestedly. She could be having a bubble-bath right now…

"_Okay_," Reid said, eyes widening at her tone. "Still not into the caring-and-sharing with Sarah, then?"

"Not when it's mine and Grandpa's dinner-night at the Colony Club," Emmeline said. "We didn't get to talk about anything."

"What do _you_ have to talk about?" Reid asked, and there was something in his tone that Emmeline didn't like, and had rarely heard before. He only ever used that tone when he was being condescending to Aaron and his friends.

Emmeline sighed heavily and settled back into her seat. She could have been having a bubble-bath right now, listening to some nice music, going to bed early to try and get a good night's sleep for once… The weight of what the night held settled on her shoulders, making them physically slump. She didn't want to get drunk; she didn't want to have to be polite and talk to people and drink lots; she didn't want to spend all of tomorrow with a hangover, stumbling around the house in her fluffiest robe and slippers and a pair of sunglasses, living off milky tea and Cheez-It crackers. She and Grandpa were supposed to get up and go sailing and have lunch at the club. There was nothing as good for a hangover as the motion of the waves against the side of a boat…

And Grandpa had orchestrated this…

_He'll be punished tomorrow_, Emmeline vowed, as Tyler drew into the parking-lot outside a liquor store.

"What're you doing?"

"Pre-drinking," Tyler said, as Reid hopped out of the car. Tyler glanced back at her. "You better go with him if you want anything other than beer." Sighing heavily, Emmeline slipped out of the car, following in Reid's wake. Conscious of the fact that she wore a satin slip and cardigan, she found Reid examining the packs of beer.

"Hey, grab something to drink," Reid said, gesturing to the other aisles.

"What if I don't want to—?"

"You're partying with us, Emmeline," Reid said with mock sternness. "I'm not gonna let you get through this year without some good memories to look back on."

"And here I thought you rarely remember _anything_ from nights out," Emmeline said, walking over to the display of familiar liquors. Hearing a gentle clinking behind her, she reached for a bottle of Southern Comfort as Reid approached carrying two cases of beer. He tutted, and reached for a second bottle of Southern Comfort.

"Reid, I'm not going to drink all this," Emmeline said, gesturing to the one bottle in her hand, trying to replace the second back on the shelf, but Reid wouldn't let her.

"Go get some mixer," he said, and, sighing heavily, Emmeline went and grabbed a bottle of Coke.

"I don't have any money on me, Reid," she said, having left her purse in the car with Tyler.

"It's on me," Reid shrugged. "It'll be worth it just to see you get shit-faced for the first time in ages."

"Not ages. The bonfire party," Emmeline said, taking hold of the plastic bag in which her bottles of Southern Comfort and Coke were stored.

"My point exactly," Reid said. "That was like three weeks ago." He carried the cases of beer out to the car and Emmeline climbed in; Tyler drove them over to Spenser, and Reid inconspicuously used magic to disguise what he was carrying as they entered the dorms, which were beginning to show signs of life, in that no doors in the senior landing were closed, and the stairwell was blocked and safeguarded against the chaperones. Music was pouring out from various doorways as people chatted loudly and giggled and exchanged lewd stories and tipsily tried to play _Wii_ video-games. Sofas from the larger dormitories had been brought out into the hallway and so had Twister mats, coffee-tables set up for Texas-Hold 'em and Blackjack.

Tyler unlocked the boys' dorm-room, which had been mercifully tidied since Emmeline had last stepped inside it, and Reid went straight to the little mini-refrigerator the boys shared, to stash some of the beers. Emmeline sank onto the end of Tyler's bed, wondering what she had gotten herself into.

"Hey," Reid said, picking up his cell-phone when it vibrated on a stack of CDs acting as coasters, grinning at Emmeline. "Yeah, we got her. Bring something over for her." Emmeline raised her eyebrows inquisitively, wondering who he was talking to, and just what that ominous statement had meant; a few minutes later, two girls appeared in the dormitory doorway, which had been left unobstructed.

Only, they weren't the girls Emmeline had ever seen before.

Sarah had stolen Kate's Spenser cheerleading uniform, and wore her hair up in a preppy style that made her look very young and chipper. Kate wore a white lab-coat and huge glasses, had drawn freckles on her cheeks and put her hair up in two sloppy buns on top of her head.

"Er…what's going on?" Emmeline asked Tyler, who handed her a strong Southern Comfort and Coke while he snapped the caps off two bottles of beer for himself and Reid.

"It's an Opposites-themed party," Tyler explained, glancing at the girls, who brought a large backpack with them, and several bottles.

"How do you mean?"

"Well, okay, Sarah's a nerdy smart-girl," Tyler said, "so she's the antithesis; a cheerleader. And Kate's, well, a Kate, so we just made her go as a nerd."

"Okay… What're they doing?" Emmeline asked him warily, seeing the girls glancing at Emmeline and conferring, searching through the bag they had brought with them.

"Oh, they're going to slut you up."

* * *

**A.N.**: Please review!


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